Perhaps the window of Carlo Scarpa explains it all. As Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara have curated two years ago, the architecture Biennale of Venice, revealing the two Irish architects in the main building there is a window of the Italian space artist Scarpa. Over the decades, it was behind the walls of oblivion.

The effect was amazing. What used to be the lumber room of the whole Biennale was, shone out suddenly in bright light. The Glitter of the canal that runs directly behind the building, came back into view, just as the clouds in the sky, in short: You felt, where you were, and enjoyed it.

Good architecture creates for Farrell and McNamara, which are founded in 1978, her architecture firm, Grafton Architects, and now, together, for her work with the Pritzker prize, just the places, by a clever use of light and space, with Material and proportions to the enjoyment. "It is one thing to make something Functional. But that's not enough. Architecture has the ability to improve a place," said Shelley McNamara once and that they both "eternal optimist inside": Who is the architect, will simply.

Famous Grafton-construction: The Bocconi University in Milan. Photo: Federico Brunetti

Maybe you have to be a ruthless Optimist, if one selects a just-in Ireland the profession of the architect. So heart-breaking beautiful is this island, with its rugged rocks, the green meadows and the gentle mountain giants, so stunning ugly is usually what is built there: soulless houses where the Garage adjusted the Outlook in the spectacle of nature; a faceless office building of steel and glass, and sprawling commercial areas. The construction boom of the past decades shows in Ireland be hässlichstes face.

Farrell and McNamara, who were both studying in Dublin, and her office is a street there named, to fight against it. Not with protest posters and campaigns, but with buildings that are your place just. For this, they study how the light falls there, how the people behave in the place and what it takes to make a relationship between you and the building is to be erected. It is a in the best sense of the intended architecture.

Heavy, but not unwieldy

How well this works, see, for example, of your University building in Milan. The entrance facade juts out so far forward, that a public place including that, in turn, produced a kind of magical Attraction to the construction. From the outside, the view is pulled right into the middle, into the Foyer, and in the opaque bright lecture hall, along the lines of a graphic pattern.

Grafton-building have a certain degree of Severity, nothing to do with hard-to-maturity, has to do a lot with place attachment to. It helps that the architect is to work inside preferably with concrete and stone. Like Sculptors, they form from it of their volume.

in fact, your designs often, such as geometric sculptures, only that the buildings are not ends in themselves, but always to their users. What is more beautiful is, because that is usually many people from The office building, especially University and school buildings, mainly in Ireland but also in France, the UK and even one in Peru.

The Urban Institute of Ireland. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

For your work of Farrell and McNamara, who both also, and have already received many awards, including most recently, the Royal Gold Medal in 2020, the highest award for architecture in the UK. Now, therefore, the Pritzker prize. Who gets the 100'000 Dollar prize in the architecture world, is a Star, without If and But.

Accordingly, gloss of the gallery of ancestors of the Pritzkers since he was awarded in 1979 for the first Time. Norman Foster is including Rem Koolhaas, Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Peter Zumthor and Gottfried Böhm. So price worthy of all of these builders are so clear they reflect how the world of architecture works: at the Very top of a man, like white, like something older, like large-masterly awesome.

In the more than 40-year history of the award, Zaha Hadid and Kazuyo Sejima, who won along with her office partner Ryue Nishizawa were, so far, the only Architect that got him. More women than men studying architecture for years.

Farrell and McNamara, the number of Pritzker-prize-winner doubled on the inside now, in one fell swoop. It makes more than double sense: firstly, because the work of Grafton shows what can architecture outstanding. Beauty bring, the experience with all your senses and still your fulfillment in the service of the society. Secondly, because the Talent to create such, has nothing to do with gender, as suggested long of the Pritzker prize.

Before you said your own name, they praised her Team.

Or, as Yvonne Farrell once said: "imagination is nothing, depending on the gender. It is a human attribute. In our whole life we have been taught and madness talents seen, women as well as men." And thirdly, because architecture is always less something, what can create a person alone.

Farrell and McNamara show for over 40 years, what it means to work in a Team to design, on an equal footing to develop ideas and to support each other. The Jury of the Pritzker prize justifies her judgment because even with the "Faith, cooperation", the price showed-makers, and their "generosity towards their colleagues". This is just as important as the "incredible strength in their architecture," their "deep relationship to the local Situation" and the "different answers" that you find on each order.

generosity is certainly not, of course, in an industry that calls in competitions to continue during the competition. For Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara - both personable and extremely polite - it is, however, something of a trademark, which was also on the architecture biennial: Before you said your own name, they praised her Team.

their enthusiasm for the Work shown in the architect was contagious, because really. And by Carlo Scarpa window stored free, provided the entire architecture on a pedestal. The Pritzker prize honors this year, two women who not only promote their own art, but good architecture. And there is really never enough.

Created: 05.03.2020, 08:06 PM