The design duo joins Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima, and Carme Pigem to respectively become the fourth and fifth women among 48 laureates to have won the illustrious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Hadid took the prize on her own in 2004, while Sejima shared the 2010 prize with Ryue Nishizawa and Pigem shared the 2017 prize with both Rafael Aranda and Ramon Vilalta. Interestingly, NPR news observes that awarding the 2020 prize to McNamara and Farrell reflects the field’s growing population of women architects, although the Chicago Tribune points out there are “struggles women architects still face in a male-dominated profession, including lesser pay and fewer opportunities for advancement than their male counterparts.”

People magazine, meanwhile, showcased McNamara and Farrell’s teamwork and mutual appreciation for each other’s strengths. McNamara says of Farrell in the article that “Yvonne has an enormous sense of humanity and integrity, and she has the talent to bring that right into the center of our work.”

Farrell likewise complimented her business partner, noting that “Shelley is unbelievably tenacious. I would say fearless as well. Shelly is an architect in every molecule of her existence. She will not let things be, other than the very best.”

Leveraging the traditions of brutalist architecture, the pair employs massive rigidity, block-like appearances, and raw geometric concrete at an immense scale in the university buildings they’re renowned for designing. The Guardian has, for instance, noted that McNamara and Farrell “have a preference for weighty materials, such as concrete and stone, often sculpted in massive volumes [to] give their buildings a tough, primal quality.” Of course, they also work in other touches to offset the harshness, like “airy atria, broad meandering staircases, views between floors, [and] places to perch and loiter, celebrating the ‘free gifts’ that architecture can provide to the public beyond merely fulfilling a client’s brief.”

McNamara and Farrell are also deeply committed to extending a building’s aesthetic to encompass its location’s cultural ethics. The Guardian notes that the duo pays attention to “the spaces in between,” which accounts for their architecture being designed “as a kind of ‘scaffolding’ on which lives and events can be played out.” It is no wonder that, as Architectural Record cited, the Pritzker Prize jury selected McNamara and Farrell because of “their deep understanding of ‘spirit of place.’” The jury also emphasized that Grafton Architects, “without grand or frivolous gestures, have managed to create buildings that are monumental institutional presences when appropriate, but even so they are zoned and detailed in such a way as to produce more intimate spaces that create community within.”

The two met as fellow architecture students at University College Dublin during the 1970s. In 1978, they opened Grafton Architects with three other partners who eventually moved onto other things, gaining prominence in the early 1990s when they designed some buildings for the city’s Trinity College and Temple Bar Square.

By 2003, the pair ventured into designing architecture outside of Ireland, even winning an international competition to design the Universita Luigi Bocconi economics building in Milan, which was completed five years later. Many in international architecture circles praised the design, granting it the distinction of World Building of the Year at the 2008 inaugural World Architecture Festival and solidifying Grafton Architects’ place among the world’s premiere designers of university campus buildings. What followed after Italy were projects with universities in Peru, France, and several more in the United Kingdom. In the British Isles, McNamara and Farrell updated the University of Limerick’s university president’s campus residence, freshened up a multi-use building at Kingston-upon-Thames’ Kingston University, and most recently have begun work on a London School of Economics building, which The Guardian says will be completed next year.

In 2018, McNamara and Farrell were asked to curate the 16th edition of the Venice Bienniale, which they did with the theme “Freespace.” They also used the opportunity to articulate their ethos, explaining that “in creating our manifesto for the Bienniale, we wrote down a litany of our shared values. That came very easily, because architecture is not just ideas; it’s translating ideas into very physical realities.” The McNamara-Farrell “Freespace” manifesto, as Architectural Record cited, “highlights the generous, democratic quality of architecture to provide ‘spatial gifts for those who use it’ and to leverage resources that they call ‘nature’s free gifts’ — sunlight and moonlight, air, gravity, materials.”

Besides being architects, both McNamara and Farrell are also architecture professors, teaching the youth about their profession and often highlighting the joys of the design work they do. When asked why they were so interested in designing architecture for universities, McNamara explained that both Farrell and herself were “passionately interested in education. The university should be a place where knowledge is tended like a garden. And we’re the guardians of knowledge.”

“Teaching for us has always been a parallel reality,” Farrell added on Irish Central. “And it’s a way of trying to distill our experience and gift it to other generations coming along so that they actually play a role in the growing of that culture. So it’s a two-way thing, we learn from students, and hopefully students learn from us.”

The post In Historic First, Coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize Awarded to Two Women first appeared on Dornob.

Now, over a century later, many carriage houses have been converted into homes, and they often have significant historic value. In Dublin, on a 200-year-old estate called Bolton Hall, both the main house and carriage house are protected structures. So when Ferreira Architects was commissioned to helm a renovation, they had to adhere to strict rules about what could be updated, and about what must be restored.

To preserve all of the carriage house’s original details while bringing in some modern flair, the architects worked alongside interior design firm Kingston Lafferty Design from the very beginning, involving them in fundamental decisions that would influence the overall look and feel. The renovation also involved reimagining the interior architecture and incorporating a new contemporary addition and exterior terraces.

The firm also developed the home’s interior design, landscape design, and much of the furniture design, bringing together a cohesive palette of colors and materials that you might not expect to find in a rural setting.

“The new design combines and juxtaposes the old and new buildings as one interesting and exciting multi-level, unique space,” they explain. “The existing coach house is brimming with character, charm, and original detail, so we opted to maximize this with the design. We deliberately created interesting spaces, nooks, and crannies, contrasting the old building with a juxtaposing minimal and streamlined extension design.”

“We wanted to provide the user with the optimum exciting experience, with multiple routes and ways to use the space. We employed mild steel portals to link the different areas and a floating timber stair[case] to act as a strong feature connecting the stone walls. To maximize the beautiful exterior spaces, we designed two exterior terraces, with one linking the indoor to outdoor via a fully tiled cantilevered table and bi-folding window detail.”

The vaulted brick ceilings and stonework of the original carriage house are clearly the dominating element, setting the tone and providing a whole lot of character. To balance its ruggedness, Kingston Lafferty brought in clean-lined, minimalist elements like smooth, pale wood floors, sharply defined doorways, and translucent panels, all of which have been married to the stone by way of textured concrete.

What makes this renovation stand out, however, is the elegant, feminine sensibility of the custom furnishings and fixtures, like a striking pink couch accented by red hanging lamps. A lot of designers would have leaned into the industrial nature of the building’s history, giving it a bit more of a masculine energy, but instead of an overabundance of concrete and metal pipes, we find polished marble, patterned tile, and gleaming brass.

The juxtaposition of these elements is thrillingly effective and enhanced by the fluidity of the spatial layout, making it seem like there’s always something interesting to discover around the next corner.

The post Modern Accents Meet Historic Stone in Dublin’s Bolton Coach House first appeared on Dornob.

The holiday season is upon us, and people everywhere are heading out in droves to enjoy the sights and sounds of Christmas. From caroling to festive fun and frolicking, there’s certainly no shortage of spirit right now, and one of the most recent trends to emerge at this time of year is that of intricate lighting displays. Whether it’s individual homes coming alive with projections of angels, snowflakes, and Christmas scenes, or plazas, squares, and boulevards decked out with ornaments, decorations, and strings of fairy lights, you’re bound to find fun Christmas lights pretty much anywhere you go. It’s also a great opportunity to go out and be a tourist in your own town.

In honor of all that, we thought we’d check out some of our favorite Christmas light displays from around the globe.

Tokyo, Japan

Japan’s capital is known for its bustling intersections, loud audiovisual spectacles, and quirky character, and this really comes to the fore at Christmas time. Various neighborhoods across the city enter into something of a competition to see who can produce the best winter light installation, giving tourists visiting the city around the holiday season the treat of glittering arrangements in lots of different districts. One of the most popular winter illuminations is located in Midtown, where visitors can see a carpet of blue lights laid out on the ground. The “Starlight Garden” area here also features a whopping 190,000 LED lights.

Las Vegas, Nevada

“America’s Playground” is undoubtedly one of the most extravagant places in the world all year round, but it really outdoes itself when it comes to Christmas lights. The Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a race track that’s turned into a neon tunnel every holiday season, where visitors can venture beyond the famous Strip and ride down the two-and-a-half-mile “Glittering Lights” circuit. All in all, 500 displays appear in the LED setup, so you’re sure to be entertained while you wait for your turn.

Dublin, Ireland

The Irish capital is a great place to visit at any time of year, but lovers of the winter holidays will find that Dublin has a couple extra-twinkly treats in store for Christmas. The city’s famous Christmas lights are switched on every November, but this year the city’s most prominent buildings, including Trinity College, Central Bank, and the Customs House, are used as canvases for projections of Christmassy displays that make for a great walking route for anyone new to the city and looking to explore.

Austin, Texas

The cultural capital of Texas is no stranger to top-notch light shows, as it’s been hosting its “Trail of Lights” event for some 50 years now. Visitors can follow a 2.1-mile-long trail that takes them through the city’s Zilker Park, where an incredible 800 trees are lit up. An additional 50 light displays round out this amazing spectacle, cumulatively taking over 500 volunteers to set up each year. Austin is also home to the Zilker Tree, the self-proclaimed “World’s Tallest Manmade Christmas Tree” that towers 155 feet above the ground.

The post Stunning Christmas Light Displays From Around the World first appeared on Dornob.

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