HERSTORY
 Dublin architects are first two women to share Pritzker prize


Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, co-founders of Grafton Architects in Dublin, Ireland, won the 2020 Pritzker Architecture Prize. File Photo courtesy of the Alice Clancy

March 3 (UPI) -- For the first time in the Pritzker Architecture Prize's four-decade history, the organization handed out the industry's most prestigious award to two women Tuesday.

The organization named Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara as 2020's winners of what's considered to be the Nobel prize of architecture. They co-founded Grafton Architects in Dublin in the 1978.

"Architecture could be described as one of the most complex and important cultural activities on the planet," Farrell said. "To be an architect is an enormous privilege. To win this prize is a wonderful endorsement of our belief in architecture. Thank you for this great honor."

Farrell and McNamara are known for their designs of educational buildings, including the University Campus UTEC Lima in Peru; the Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole, School of Economics in France; and the Universita Luigi Bocconi in Milan, Italy.

Often relying on concrete and stone in their structures, the two are known for working in urban spaces and using a modern approach while "honoring history," a news release announcing the win said.

"The collaboration between Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara represents a veritable interconnectedness between equal counterparts," said Tom Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the award. "They demonstrate incredible strength in their architecture, show deep relation to the local situation in all regards, establish different responses to each commission while maintaining the honesty of their work, and exceed the requirements of the field through responsibility and community."

In their home country, Farrell and McNamara designed North King Street Housing and the offices for the Department of Finance, the latter of which used local limestone in thick panels in order to convey a sense of strength.

As winners of the Pritzker prize, the two will receive $100,000 and a bronze medallion.

"Within the ethos of a practice such as ours, we have so often struggled to find space for the implementation of such values as humanism, craft, generosity, and cultural connection with each place and context within which we work. It is therefore extremely gratifying that this recognition is bestowed upon us and our practice and upon the body of work we have managed to produce over a long number of years," McNamara said. "It is also a wonderful recognition of the ambition and vision of the clients who commissioned us and enabled us to bring our buildings to fruition."

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Architecture's top prize awarded to two Irish women

AFP/File / FILIPPO MONTEFORTEYvonne Farrell (L) and Shelley McNamara, pictured in 2018, are the first female duo and first Irish citizens to win the Pritzker Prize in architecture

Dublin-based Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara were awarded the Pritzker prize on Tuesday -- the first time a female duo has scooped architecture's most prestigious award.

The pair gained international fame for their brutalist-inspired structures, pairing strong, heavy materials like stark concrete with delicate human-scale detail like lookout points, meeting places and spots to loiter.

The pair met at university in 1974, and went on to found their firm Grafton Architects in 1978 in Dublin, where they have worked together for four decades.

McNamara, 68, and Farrell, 69, are the first female duo to win a Pritzker, and the first architects from Ireland to be awarded the prize.

"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," read the jury citation.

Just three women have won Pritzkers before them: Zaha Hadid in 2004, Kazuyo Sejima in 2010 (with Ryue Nishizawa) and Carme Pigem in 2017 (with Ramon Vilalta and Rafael Aranda).

AFP/File / CARL COURTIrish architect Yvonne Farrell, a newly minted Pritzker laureate, poses next to her installation at the Royal Academy of Arts in central London in 2014

In announcing their selection, the jury cited Farrell and McNamara's "integrity" and "generosity towards their colleagues" -- both continue to teach, rare for architects of their repute.

The judges also praised their "unceasing commitment to excellence in architecture, their responsible attitude toward the environment, their ability to be cosmopolitan while embracing the uniqueness of each place in which they work."

The pair say Ireland informed their focus on geography and shifts in climate, resulting in buildings that celebrate detail while remaining modest.

"What we try to do in our work is to be aware of the various levels of citizenship and try to find an architecture that deals with overlap, that heightens your relationship to one another," the Pritzker committee quoted Farrell as saying.

- 'Earth as client' -

In 2008, Farrell and McNamara's celebrated Grafton Building at Milan's Bocconi University was named World Building of the Year at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, a prize that thrust the pair onto the international stage.

The past four decades have seen them complete projects in Ireland as well as Britain, France, Italy and Peru -- notably designing many educational and civic buildings -- all with nuanced sensitivity to a site's natural elements and needs.

"The collaboration between Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara represents a veritable interconnectedness between equal counterparts," said Tom Pritzker, chairman of the foundation that sponsors the award.

"They demonstrate incredible strength in their architecture, show deep relation to the local situation in all regards, establish different responses to each commission while maintaining the honesty of their work, and exceed the requirements of the field through responsibility and community."

In 2018, Farrell and McNamara curated that year's Venice Architecture Biennale, entitled "Freespace," which they defined as "a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture's agenda."

 

AFP/File / FILIPPO MONTEFORTEIn announcing their selection, the Pritzker jury cited Farrell and McNamara's "integrity" and "generosity towards their colleagues" -- both continue to teach, rare for architects of their repute

"We are interested in going beyond the visual, emphasizing the role of architecture in the choreography of daily life," they said in their Biennale announcement.

"We see the Earth as client. This brings with it long-lasting responsibilities."

In 2016, their firm won the inaugural RIBA International Prize, for their University of Engineering and Technology building in Peru, which the judges called a "modern-day Machu Picchu" for its verticality and mix of open and enclosed spaces.

Though acclaimed, the pair have cautioned against the "starchitect" phenomenon that celebrates eye candy and celebrity over structural needs.

Farrell, speaking to Spain's IE University in 2015, instead likened architects to translators, saying "we translate people's needs and their dreams into reality."

"We make the space in which life happens, and I think our profession needs to expand to embrace all the other disciplines of environmental sustainability, of making, of the crisis, of changing people's attitude."

2020: Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara
The Irish duo are the fourth and fifth women to win the prestigious prize in its 41-year history. Their Dublin-based firm, Grafton Architects, is renowned for designs using concrete and stone. The judges lauded the pair for buildings that "maintain a human scale and achieve intimate environments." The Bocconi University (photo) in Milan is one of their acclaimed designs.