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| news.virginia.edu |
Joe Cianciotto: Iconic Women in Architecture Today
According Joe Cianciotto, women have made their mark in architecture. Today, he pays tribute to two icons of the industry -- Yvonne Farrell and Shelle McNamara.
Farrell and McNamara took the spotlight in the most prestigious award in architecture - the Pritzker Prize. In 2020, co-founders Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Irish firm Grafton Architects became the laureates of what is dubbed architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
By winning the Pritzker Prize 2020, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara became the fourth and fifth female architects to win the award. The jury saw them as pioneers in a field that is traditionally a male-dominated profession. Both women have also been hailed as beacons to other women as they forged their own exemplary and professional paths. Past female architects who won the Pritzker Prize include Zaha Hadid in 2004, Kazuyo Sejima in 2010, and Carme Pigem in 2017.
Joe Cianciotto also notes that Yvonne Farrell (1951) and Shelley McNamara (1952), along with three others, founded Grafton Architects in Dublin in 1978. The firm was named after a street of their original office to focus on the significance of a place instead of individuals. Significant projects in their home country of Ireland include the North King Street Housing (Dublin, 2000); Urban Institute of Ireland, University College Dublin (Dublin, 2002); Solstice Arts Centre (Navan, 2007); and many others.
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| e-architect.com |
Grafton Architects also had projects abroad, such as the Universita Luigi Bocconi in Milan (Milan, Italy 2008), which took the World Building of the Year award at the 2008 inaugural World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, Spain. Since then, more international projects came in and were equally cited by the architectural community, like the University Campus UTEC Lima (Lima, Peru 2015) - awarded the RIBA International Prize 2016 by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
According to Joe Cianciotto, recently completed projects include Institut Mines Télécom (Paris, France 2019) and Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, School of Economics (Toulouse, France 2019).
