In just over 40 years, the duo has completed numerous projects that helped enhance cities and respond to local needs in Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Peru. Farrell and McNamara, the 47th and 48th Laureates of the Pritzker Prize, are the first two recipients of the award from Ireland.
The duo behind the 2018 Venice Biennale, who describes architecture “as one of the most complex and important cultural activities on the planet”, met at the School of Architecture at University College Dublin (UCD). Upon graduating, both Farrell and McNamara were offered the opportunity of teaching. In fact, they have always considered this part of the profession as a “parallel reality […] and a way to distill [their] experience and gift it to other generations coming along”. They have been lecturers at many worldwide institutions including école Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Academia di Architettura di Mendrisio.
In 1978, they established Grafton Architects, originally with three other people, but ended up staying alone in the firm. The practice named after the street of their original office, has an extensive portfolio with significant cultural and academic projects like the Urban Institute of Ireland, University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland 2002); Solstice Arts Centre (Navan, Ireland 2007); Loreto Community School (Milford, Ireland 2006); and Medical School, University of Limerick (Limerick, Ireland 2012).
Starting their architectural awakening in their early childhood years, McNamara recalls her first discovery, an 18th-century house on the main street of the city of Limerick, where space and light aroused her senses. Farell on the other hand, was fascinated by her hometown Tullamore, Co.Offaly, especially by its natural landscape, where she felt “close to nature”.
Far from their projects in their native Ireland, their first international commission, the Universita Luigi Bocconi in Milan (Milan, Italy 2008), was awarded the World Building of the Year at the 2008 inaugural World Architectural Festival in Barcelona. Later on in 2015, the challenging University Campus UTEC Lima (Lima, Peru 2015) was granted the inaugural RIBA International Prize 2016 by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara have practiced architecture together for forty years in a way that clearly reflects the objectives of the Pritzker Prize: to recognize the art of architecture and consistent service to humanity as evidenced through a body of built work.
Co-founding their professional practice, called Grafton Architects, in Dublin, Ireland in 1978, they have consistently and unhesitatingly pursued the highest quality of architecture for the specific location in which it was to be built, the functions it would house and especially for the people who would inhabit and use their buildings and spaces. They have an oeuvre that includes numerous educational buildings, housing and cultural and civic institutions. Pioneers in a field that has traditionally been and still is a male-dominated profession, they are also beacons to others as they forge their exemplary professional path.
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