The Urban Developer
AdvertiseEventsWebinars
Urbanity
Awards
Sign In
Membership
Latest
Menu
Location
Sector
Category
Content
Type
Newsletters
Untitled design (8)
25 DAYS UNTIL OUR UNMISSABLE FLAGSHIP CONFERENCE 29-31 JULY, GOLD COAST
25 DAYS UNTIL OUR FLAGSHIP CONFERENCE 29-31 JULY, GOLD COAST
SECURE YOUR SPOTDETAILS
TheUrbanDeveloper
Follow
About
About Us
Membership
Awards
Events
Webinars
Listings
Resources
Terms & Conditions
Commenting Policy
Privacy Policy
Republishing Guidelines
Editorial Charter
Complaints Handling Policy
Contact
General Enquiries
Advertise
Contribution Enquiry
Project Submission
Membership Enquiry
Newsletter
Stay up to date and with the latest news, projects, deals and features.
Subscribe
ADVERTISEMENT
SHARE
print
Print
ArchitectureAna NarvaezThu 03 Oct 19

Grafton Architects Wins Britain’s Top Architecture Honour

32fa504f-8357-4c34-a0cc-6c22fd451167

British architecture’s highest honour, the RIBA gold medal, has been awarded to a Dublin-based practice led by women and known for its embrace of brutalism and commitment to academia.

The 2020 RIBA gold medal was awarded to Grafton Architects, a firm co-founded by Irish architecture professors Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara in 1978.

It is just the second time in the award’s 172-year history that the prize has been given to a firm led by women after Zaha Hadid’s 2016 win.

Far removed from the “starchitect” culture of cultivated instagrams and branding strategies, Farrell and McNamara teach and lecture internationally and have been solidly working from their Dublin base for 40-odd years.

RIBA president Alan Jones said that the breadth of supporters for Grafton Architects gold medal nomination was a “roll call of significant names from the worlds of academia, arts and architecture”.

▲ Grafton Architects directors Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara.


The duo curated last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale with the theme “freespace” which called for “generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda”.

Farrell and McNamara said that the invitation to curate the 2018 biennale came as a surprise.

“And that’s putting it mildly.”

The prestigious award is not the firm’s first accolade—the practice was awarded RIBA’s international prize in 2016 for a university campus in Peru, while it's Universita Luigi Bocconi building in Milan was awarded the “world building of the year” and the RIAI triennial gold medal.

The Royal Gold Medal, “approved personally” by the Queen according to a press release issued by the RAIA, will be presented to Grafton Architects at a ceremony in early 2020.

▲ Grafton Architect's Universidad de Ingenieria y Tecnologia in Peru won the 2016 RIBA International Award.


In a statement, Farrell and McNamara said the firm works hard to give each project the attention needed to “hopefully enrich people’s lives”.

“For us, architecture is an optimistic profession, with the opportunity to anticipate future realities.

“It is of the highest cultural importance because it is the built enclose of human lives.

“It translates people’s needs and dreams into built form, into the silent language of space.”

Australia’s equivalent of the gold medal—granted by Australian architecture’s peak body, the AIA—was awarded in June to Los Angeles-based expatriates Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg.

OtherInternationalArchitecturePlanningPlanningProject
AUTHOR
Ana Narvaez
The Urban Developer - Editorial Director
More articles by this author
ADVERTISEMENT
TOP STORIES
Exclusive

Carparking Correlation: How Parking Fees Provide Office Sector Health Check

Taryn Paris
6 Min
Molti chief Ben Teague out front of 32 Mercer Road Aramadale (rendering)
Exclusive

Buy to the Sound of Cannons: Molti’s Counter-Cyclical Move to Melbourne

Leon Della Bosca
5 Min
Exclusive

Tapping the Bunnings ‘Halo Effect’

Taryn Paris
5 Min
Exclusive

‘Construction Not a Scale Game’: Hutchinson

Phil Bartsch
9 Min
Nation's build-to-rent project Charlie Parker in Sydney's Parramatta where more projects are being located and built outside the CBD.
Exclusive

Foreign Capital Still Dominates BtR but Things are Changing

Marisa Wikramanayake
7 Min
View All >
The construction site which will one day become Newcastle Tallest Tower by Urban Property Group
Residential

Urban Property Group Reveals Newcastle Tallest Tower Plan

Renee McKeown
ESR building ESR completes delisting
Industrial

ESR Reveals New Team After Hong Kong Delisting

Leon Della Bosca
the four concept towers approved for sydney metro's parramatta precinct
Development

Rush of Approvals Sends Parramatta Skywards

Renee McKeown
Two projects of six towers, including a 47-storey build-to-rent scheme, have moved ahead as Sydney’s second CBD grows up…
LATEST
The construction site which will one day become Newcastle Tallest Tower by Urban Property Group
Residential

Urban Property Group Reveals Newcastle Tallest Tower Plan

Renee McKeown
3 Min
ESR building ESR completes delisting
Industrial

ESR Reveals New Team After Hong Kong Delisting

Leon Della Bosca
3 Min
the four concept towers approved for sydney metro's parramatta precinct
Development

Rush of Approvals Sends Parramatta Skywards

Renee McKeown
2 Min
Bunnings Clyde North
Markets

Bunnings Sold On as Charter Hall Doubles Down on Retail

Leon Della Bosca
2 Min
View All >
ADVERTISEMENT
Article originally posted at: https://theurbandeveloper.com/articles/grafton-architects-wins-britains-top-architecture-honour