In the world of architecture there is no more prestigious prize than the Pritzker: this year the recognition considered the Nobel Prize for an architect went to two women, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, the founders of the Grafton studio in Dublin. During a decades-long career Farrell and McNamara have designed iconic buildings such as the Bocconi School of Economics in Milan (their first international order) and in 2018 they curated the Venice Architecture Biennale in the name of "generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity that architecture places at the center of its agenda, focusing on the quality of the space itself ".
The prize has been awarded since 1979 by the Pritzker Foundation in Chicago: it went to Philip Johnson for the first time and then, among others, to Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, Robert Venturi, and, last year, to Arata Isozaki , the eighth Japanese. Two Italians won a Pritzker, Aldo Rossi and Renzo. Only three other women, however, have won a Pritzker in the past , demonstrating an imbalance at the highest levels of the profession: Zaha Hadid in 2004, Kazuyo Sejima in 2010 (with Ryue Nishizawa) and Carme Pigem in 2017 (with Ramón Vilalta and Rafael Aranda).
This year, in the motivation, the jury made up of architects and professors and chaired by the former Supreme Court judge Stepher Breyer, admitted that the world of architecture still remains "male dominated". Known for their sturdy concrete and stone buildings, Farrell and McNamara have built especially in Ireland since they founded the Grafton studio in 1978: among their works, the new Ministry of Finance in Dublin and the Solstice Arts Center in the nearby city from Navan. Grafton Architects are famous above all for schools and universities : it was the design of the Bocconi campus, named World Building of the Year at the Barcelona Architecture Festival, which earned Farrell and McNamara international fame.
Other buildings designed for academic institutions are at University College Dublin, the Toulouse School of Economics, the London School of Economics and the campus of the Lima Engineering and Technology School in Peru, for which the two architects won in 2016 the RIBA International Prize.