This year the Pritzker Prize, Nobel for Architecture, was awarded to two women: Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, founders of the Grafton studio in Dublin.
Among the first to receive the prize, which was established in 1979 by the Pritzker Foundation in Chicago, were: Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, Robert Venturi, and more recently, in 2019, the Japanese Arata Isozaki. Among the Italians, Aldo Rossi and Renzo.
As for the recognition given to women, we find: Zaha Hadid in 2004, Kazuyo Sejima in 2010 (with Ryue Nishizawa) and Carme Pigem in 2017 (with Ramón Vilalta and Rafael Aranda).
During their long career, we remember them for having designed the Bocconi School of Economics in Milan and in 2018, curated the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Farrell and McNamara also built mainly in Ireland, the new Ministry of Finance in Dublin and the Solstice Arts Center in the nearby town of Navan. Grafton Architects are most famous for Schools and Universities: the Bocconi campus design, named World Building of the Year at the Barcelona Architecture Festival, which earned them international prestige.
Other buildings designed for academic institutions are University College Dublin, the Toulouse School of Economics, the London School of Economics and the campus of the school of engineering and
