Pritzker Prize 2020: The Latest Architecture and News

Shelley McNamara is one-half of the renowned Irish-based Grafton Architects studio, together with Yvonne Farrell. Pritzker Prize 2020 Laureates founded their practice in 1978 and are well-known for their co-curation of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. In this interview with Louisiana Channel, McNamara talks through her design theories, direction, inspirations, and the studio’s approach to “humanism.”

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The Pritzker Architecture Prize has released a special video to honor 2020 Laureates, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, the 47th and 48th Laureates of the award, and the first two Irish citizens to receive the distinction. For the first time in the 42-year history of the award, an in-person ceremony could not be held, therefore organizers created a film, discussing the meaning of the Prize and revealing the Laureates’ intimate reflections on architecture.

Architects around the world are constantly striving to explore new ways of using materials that are both more environmentally friendly, and can create impactful designs that demonstrate new abilities of creativity. For 2020 Pritzker Prize winners Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects, these ideas are at the forefront of every project they design, but became especially meaningful when they visited their completed “carved mountain” project, University Campus UTEC, in Lima, Peru for the first time.

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Yesterday Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, co-founders of Grafton Architects, received the 2020 Pritzker Prize. The first women to be jointly recognized for the award also received the Royal Gold Medal 2020 from RIBA earlier this year.

Pritzker Prize 2020 Laureates, Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara are known for their powerful yet delicate approaches. In this exclusive video for ArchDaily, Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and Dean of IE School of Architecture and Design, shares some of the reasons why Grafton Architects has won the Pritzker Prize 2020.

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“When you read Love in the Time of Cholera you come to realize the magic realism of South America.” Yvonne Farrell, Shelley McNamara and I were in a corner of the Barbican Centre’s sprawling, shallow atrium talking about the subject of their most recent accolade, the Royal Institute of British Architects inaugural International Prize, awarded that previous evening. That same night the two Irish architects, who founded their practice in Dublin in the 1970s, also delivered a lecture on the Universidad de Ingeniería and Tecnologia (UTEC)—their “modern-day Machu Picchu” in Lima—to a packed audience in London’s Portland Place.

This year, architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, has been granted to Grafton Architects' Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Dublin, Ireland. The 2020 Laureates, who are both educators and architects, are known for their powerful yet delicate approaches. Their contextual and modern interventions are very attentive to history, demonstrating high levels of sensitivity and craftsmanship.

With more than 40 years of professional experience, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, partners and co-founders of Dublin-based Grafton Architects, are the first women to be jointly awarded the architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize. In addition to a very welcoming breath of hope towards greater female representation in the field, the selection also cast light over an equally urgent theme in the profession: recognizing architecture practice as a collective effort.

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Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara founded Grafton Architects in 1978, after they met each other at the School of Architecture at University College Dublin. The practice, named after the street where the duo's first office was located, has been awarded this year’s prestigious 2020 Pritzker Award. Grafton's built work reflects the continued search of architectural excellence, in buildings ranging from small scale housing to large public volumes.

Since the winner(s) of the Pritzker Prize 2020 will be announced this Tuesday, March 3, we have asked our readers who should win the most important award in the field of architecture.

Once The Hyatt Foundation has revealed the announcement date of the Pritzker Prize 2020 Winner, the speculation has begun to swirl around which architect will be named next laureate of the trophy. What used to be a somewhat predictable award has become less so in recent years, and if you look at the list of people who have won before, you will realize that anything is possible.

The Hyatt Foundation has revealed the announcement date of the Pritzker Prize 2020 Winner. The most relevant recognition in architecture will be announced on Tuesday, March 3rd, 10 am EST.