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$150,000 Jane & Kevin Roche Scholarship Fund launched to support architecture students

2022-07-11T18:33:00-04:00

A scholarship fund honoring the legacy of the late Kevin Roche has been established by the Connecticut Architecture Foundation (CAF) in coordination with the local firm Svigals + Partners and in time for what would have been the Pritzker winner’s 100th birthday this year. Roche’s children, who were behind the decision to repurpose their father’s heirlooms, said the establishment’s purpose was to “[make] the Pritzker work for the betterment of architecture in a new way, refocusing its lens from the most heralded to the least.”

The fund will begin rewarding money to students with at least two years of completed study in an undergraduate architecture program, or to those holding acceptance letters from accredited graduate programs in the subject, starting next year.

In a live event hosted in New Haven at Yale School of Architecture by Dean Deborah Berke, recent Pritzker laureates Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Ireland-based Grafton Architects presented a short video tribute, a...

Sir David Adjaye receives RIBA Gold Medal at illustrious virtual event

2021-05-28T17:14:00-04:00

Earlier this week, on May 26th, celebrated Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye formally received the 2021 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Royal Gold Medal in a virtual ceremony. Surprise luminaries from around the world, including former U.S. President Barack Obama and U2 singer Bono, participated to congratulate Adjaye on his historic accomplishment.

Calling in from Ghana, Adjaye received his award from the UK’s high commissioner to Ghana, Iain Walker, on behalf of the Queen.

Sir David Adjaye receives the RIBA 2021 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, presented by the British High Commissioner Iain Walker. Image: RIBA/Francis Kokoroko 2021

“It’s incredibly humbling and a great honor to have my peers recognize the work I have developed with my team and its contribution to the field over the past 25 years,” Adjaye said upon hearing the news that he received the Royal Gold Medal. “Architecture, for me, has always been about the creation of beauty to edify all people...

The Pritzker Prize releases the first-ever virtual ceremony honoring 2020 laureates, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects

2020-10-06T19:24:00-04:00

As previously reported on Archinect, for the first time in 42 years, the Pritzker Prize honors did not take place in person. In response to the restrictions forced by COVID-19 the Pritzker Architecture Prize has created a documentary-style archival video to celebrate the work of 2020 Laureates Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara.

2020 Pritzker Prize Ceremony Highlights

Previously on Archinect: Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects named 2020 Pritzker Prize winners

Like the traditional ceremony, there are still addresses from a number of people congratulating the duo and acceptance speeches from both McNamara and Farrell, each sharing their words remotely in special locations.

2020 Pritzker Prize Ceremony, full video

And don't forget to check out Archinect's conversation with Yvonne Farrell below:

For the first time in 42 years, the Pritzker Prize honors will not take place in person

2020-09-30T16:36:00-04:00

On October 6th, the Pritzker Architecture Prize will release a special video dedicated to 2020 Laureates Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. The documentary-style archival video will highlight the duo's work, their reflections on the industry, and a special message to aspiring architects.

For the first time in 42 years, the Pritzker Prize Awards ceremony will not be held in-person. Yet, the special video tribute will include elements of the traditional Prize ceremony, exclusive, never-before-seen footage of the Laureates and images of their work.

Universita Luigi Bocconi. Image courtesy of Federico Brunetti

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara are the 47th and 48th Pritzker Prize Laureates. Image courtesy of Alice Clancy

With acceptance speeches delivered remotely, this year's prize winners shared their thoughts in specific locations allowing viewers to look into public and private sites worldwide. For example, McNamara shared words while standing in the Long Room, the main chamber o...

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects named 2020 Pritzker Prize winners

2020-03-03T10:07:00-05:00

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects have been awarded the 2020 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Dubbed as the "Nobel Prize" of architecture, the prize is considered the industry's highest honor.

Loreto Community School, photo courtesy of Ros Kavanagh.

In a press statement announcing their selection, the Farrell wrote, “Architecture could be described as one of the most complex and important cultural activities on the planet. 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.”

To which McNamara added, “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 t...

Grafton Architects win RIBA 2020 Royal Gold Medal

2019-10-02T09:56:00-04:00

The UK’s highest honor for architecture will go to a seminal firm in neighboring Ireland, the Royal Institute of British Architects announced this morning with the selection of Grafton Architects for the 2020 Royal Gold Medal.

Based in Dublin, the practice was co-founded by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara in 1978 (the firm’s name was inspired by their original office on Grafton Street in central Dublin). Gerard Carty and Philippe O’Sullivan, who joined in 1992, now complete the leadership team as directors.

Grafton Architects have built an impressive portfolio of globally recognized buildings, most notably in the education sector, many of which resulted from international competition wins.

Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Ireland © Ros Kavanagh

"Like architects around the world, everyone in Grafton Architects works hard to give each project the attention needed to hopefully enrich people’s lives," Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara commented on their Royal Gold Medal win.

Bocconi ...

Curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara discuss the 2018 Venice Biennale's theme, Freespace

2018-06-12T13:23:00-04:00

The 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale is well underway, having opened its doors officially to the public on May 26th. Curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects under the title of Freespace, this year's biennale has put a slew of projects on display that are generous and open, asking visitors to enjoy the temporary environments they find themselves in.

In the following video, PLANE—SITE speaks with the Irish architects about the choice for this edition’s theme. The duo has stated their mission is to move beyond architecture as an object, instead imagining Freespace as an invitation to think about architecture as a space of opportunities. Literally and metaphorically, Freespace presents environments of freedom and celebrates the rich civic experience that they create.

Rowan Moore on Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara's Venice Biennale curatorship

2018-05-01T14:57:00-04:00

Farrell and McNamara’s theme is “Freespace”, which they say describes “a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda”. It can also mean the “free and additional spatial gifts” that architecture can offer and “its ability to address the unspoken wishes of strangers”. They have invited a selection of like-minded architects to demonstrate these qualities with three-dimensional installations of “scale and quality”.

Rowan Moore, architecture critic of the Observer, finds admiring words in his Guardian piece for Grafton Architects principals Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, who are wearing the curator hats this year at architecture's biggest biennial spectacle: "McNamara and Farrell are neither celebrities nor notable theorists. They are well-respected architects who, determinedly, consistently and over a long period of time, do their stuff. [...] But what stuff."

More Venice Biennale 2018 “Freespace” exhibition details are revealed

2018-03-02T15:11:00-05:00

With the 2018 Venice Biennale only two months away, curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara and Biennale president Paolo Baratta revealed the latest details about the exhibition during a press conference today. The 2018 theme “Freespace” presents “a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture's agenda, focusing on the quality of space itself.”

“We see architecture as the translation of need in its widest sense into meaningful space. In the effort to translate Freespace into the many wonderful languages of the world, we hope that it prises open the ‘gift’ which architectural invention has the potential to contribute with each project,” Farrell and McNamara said. “Translation allows us all to map and rename intellectual as well as actual territory. It is our hope that the word Freespace allows us to burrow into the aspirations, ambitions and generosity of architecture.”

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. Photo: Grafton Architects, courtesy Alice Cla...

The 2018 Venice Biennale Theme Announced Today: ‘Freespace’ Will Examine Architecture’s Essential Humanism, Beauty and Generosity

2017-06-07T17:20:00-04:00

Today in Venice, the President of La Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, and curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara announced the theme of the 2018 Architecture Biennale. Entitled “Freespace”, next year’s exhibition will present “a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture's agenda, focusing on the quality of space itself.”

Back in January, when the curators were announced, Baratta remarked of 2018’s curatorial agenda:

“The Exhibition curated by Alejandro Aravena offered visitors a critical overview of the worldwide evolution of architecture and underlined how important it is that a qualified demand on the part of individuals and communities be met by an equally effective response, thereby confirming that architecture is one of civil society’s instruments for organizing the space in which it lives and works.

Along these lines, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara will continue to address the same theme but from the point of view of the quality of ...

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara to curate 2018 Venice Biennale

2017-01-17T13:31:00-05:00

The Board of the Venice Architecture Biennale appointed Grafton Architects co-founders Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara yesterday as the curators of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, which will take place May 26 to November 25 in 2018.

UTEC campus in Lima, designed by Grafton Architects.

The Venice Biennale is familiar ground to Farrell and McNamara, who participated in the Biennale in 2002 and won the Silver Lion in 2012, where they presented their project for the UTEC campus in Lima — the winner of the inaugural RIBA International Prize. Grafton Architects was represented at the 2016 Biennale under the title, “The Physics of Culture”.

Farrell and McNamara will continue to address similar humanitarian themes set forth in Alejandro Aravena's “Reporting from the Front” last year. President Paolo Baratta, chair of the Board of the Venice Biennale, released the following statement on their appointment:

“The Exhibition curated by Alejandro Aravena offered visitors a critica...

One-to-One #49 with Yvonne Farrell, director of Grafton Architects – winners of the RIBA International Prize

2016-12-12T17:02:00-05:00

Shortly after Grafton Architects won RIBA's inaugural International Prize for their UTEC campus in Lima, Peru, I spoke with the firm's director, Yvonne Farrell, to get the backstory to the project and discuss how the award might affect the firm in the long run. As an academic building, UTEC (pictured below) joins a rich collection of other institutional projects by the Dublin-based Grafton, a sampling of which is available in the gallery below.

Listen to One-to-One #49, featuring Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects:

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Download: this episode

Shownotes:

Juhani Pallasmaa's The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

William Curtis' lecture, "Platforms and horizon"

↑ Yvonne Farrel...