GANDON MEDAL AWARD

YVONNE FARRELL AND SHELLEY MCNAMARA AWARDED RIAI GANDON MEDAL

The RIAI has awarded the RIAI James Gandon Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Architecture to Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, of Grafton Architects. The Gandon Medal is the highest personal award given to an architect in Ireland.

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, who studied at UCD together, founded Grafton Architects in 1978. Over their distinguished career spanning four decades, they have won numerous national and international awards. They were awarded the prestigious RIAI Gold Medal for Bocconi University in Milan in 2018, an award given by the RIAI to a building of outstanding merit. Bocconi University was also the inaugural recipient of the ‘World Building of the Year’ award, while their UTEC university campus in Lima, Peru won the RIBA ‘International Prize’. In 2018, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara were the curators for the Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s most renowned architectural showcase.

Recent projects include the redevelopment of the ESB Head Offices and the Parnell Square Cultural Quarter Project in Dublin. They are currently completing the Institut Mines Telecom in Paris and the School of Economics for Toulouse university, and are working on a commission for the London School of Economics. Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara have held chairs of architecture at Harvard and Yale Universities in the US.

On their win, Yvonne Farrell/Shelly McNamara, founders of Grafton Architects said: “Grafton Architects are enormously proud to receive the Gandon Medal in recognition of a lifetime’s work. Given the status of James Gandon, one of the leading architects of his time, who made timeless contributions to the architectural legacy of Dublin, this honour brings with it an enormous sense of responsibility. We will endeavour to live up to this responsibility. We thank the RIAI for bestowing this great honour upon us.”

Denise Maguire        
Editor of Plan Magazine

Email: denise@mcdmedia.ie