Pritzker 2020 – Y. Farrell and S. McNamara

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara Receive 2020 Pritzker Architecture Prize
Chicago, Illinois (March 3, 2020) – Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara from Dublin, Ireland, have been selected as the 2020 Pritzker Prize winners, it was announced Tom Pritzker, Chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the award known internationally as architecture's highest honor.

“Architecture could be described as one of the most complex and important cultural activities on the planet,” Farrell observes. “It is an enormous privilege to be an architect. Winning this award is a wonderful endorsement of our faith in architecture. Thank you for this great honor.”

As architects and educators since the 70s, Farrell and McNamara create spaces that are both respectful and new, honoring history and demonstrating a mastery of the urban environment and the craft of building. Balancing strength and subtlety, and sustaining a reverence for the site-specific contexts, their academic, civic, and cultural institutions, and housing developments, they result in modern, impactful works that never repeat or imitate, but are decidedly their own architectural expression.

“For their integrity in their approach to their buildings, as well as the way they conduct their practice, their belief in collaboration, their generosity toward their colleagues, particularly as evidenced at events such as the 2018 Venice Biennale, their unrelenting 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—for all these reasons and more, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara are awarded the 2020 Pritzker Architecture Prize.” (from the jury quote)

“Within the ethos of a practice like ours, we have so often struggled to find space for the implementation of values ​​such as humanism, craftsmanship, generosity and cultural connection to each place and context in which we work. It is therefore extremely gratifying that this recognition has been accorded to us, our practice and the work we have managed to produce over a long number of years,” says McNamara. “It is also a wonderful recognition of the ambition and vision of the clients who have commissioned us and enabled us to realise our buildings.”

Their native Ireland, an island full of mountains and cliffs, informs their keen sensibilities to geography, changing climate and nature on each of their sites. Their buildings always remain deliberately rich, yet modest, enhancing cities and lending to sustainability by responding to local needs.

Il UTEC Lima university campus (Lima, Peru 2015) is located on a challenging site with a highway sunk into a ravine on one side and a residential neighborhood on the other. The result is a vertical, cascading building that responds to the demands of both the site and the climate. Its open spaces were designed to deliberately welcome cooling ocean breezes and minimize the need for air conditioning. At the Department of Finance offices (Dublin, Ireland 2009), the selection of local limestone used in thick panels gives the building strength. The windows, recessed or flush with the façade, have grilles underneath to circulate fresh air throughout the building. Exposures on all sides of the building, atypical of the architecture of this city, offer panoramic views.

The architects are constantly aware of the dialogue between inside and outside, evidenced by the blending of public and private spaces, and the significant selection and integrity of materials. “What we try to do in our work is to be aware of the different levels of citizenship and try to find an architecture that overlaps, that increases the relationship between them,” Farrell explains.

THELuigi Bocconi University (Milan, Italy 2008) fosters community among its occupants and the vibrant city that extends far beyond the vertical campus through its ground-floor public space, which continues inside, and its floating canopy that overlaps the ground below, engaging passers-by with the students.

THEUniversité Toulouse 1 Capitole, School of Economics (Toulouse, France 2019) features brick buttresses, ramps and courtyards, metaphors of the city full of bridges, walls, promenades and stone towers.

North King Street Housing (Dublin, Ireland 2000) is intentionally devoid of external design elements to resonate with the restraint of the nearby warehouses.

“The collaboration between Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara represents a true interconnection between equal partners,” says Pritzker. “They demonstrate incredible strength in their architecture, show a deep connection to the local situation in all aspects, establish different responses to each commission while maintaining honesty in their work, and exceed the requirements of the sector through accountability and community.”

Farrell and McNamara have mastered proportions to maintain a human scale and achieve intimate spaces within tall, vast buildings. “They have tried, with remarkable success, to help all of us overcome what will likely become an increasingly serious human problem.“, explains the judge Stephen Breyer, president of the jury. “That is to say, how can we build homes and workplaces in a world with more than half of its population living in urban environments and many of them unable to afford luxury?” A theatre floor shaped like the Solstice Arts Centre (Navan, Ireland 2007) creates a physical closeness between the audience and the actors.

The generous placement of open spaces, windows, glass curtain walls and exposed ceilings allows natural light to filter through a passage of rooms, creating impressions of light across large and small spaces and within the interlocking areas that make up theInstitut Mines Télécom in Palaiseau (Paris, France 2019).

McNamara says, “Architecture is a framework for human life. It anchors us and connects us to the world in a way that probably no other spatial discipline can.” Farrell continues, “At the core of our practice is a real belief that architecture matters. It is a cultural spatial phenomenon that people invent.”

The couple founded Grafton Architects in 1978 in Dublin, where they continue to practice and reside. In just over forty years they have completed almost as many projects, located in Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Peru.

Farrell and McNamara are the 47th and 48th Pritzker Prize laureates and the first two laureates from Ireland.
Source: https://www.pritzkerprize.com