Article fromA&B 06 | 2022 issue
Creating the choreography of everyday life through architecture is one of the key features found in Grafton Architects' projects. Led by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, the office has specialized in creating meeting places, exchanges of ideas, intersections of communication in cities and buildings. Their projects abound in spaces with an understated function, which users can use in almost any way they wish.
The European Union's Mies van der Rohe Prize was awarded this year to the Kingston University Town House building in London projek
photo by Ed Reeve
Today, after months of successive lockdowns and restrictions, we need spaces like never to build physical connections, personal places and often unplanned gatherings. This year's Mies van der Rohe Prize for Kingston University Town House in London confirms that the solutions developed by the Irish office can inspire a new typology of public architecture. But is there room for climate issues in it?
The work of Grafton Architects, like that of the Lacaton & Vassal duo awarded in the previous edition, shows, above all, consistency in the implementation of the ideological program of the architects leading the office. Their successive award-winning buildings are a voice in the discussion about the shape of common space and public buildings in the city. The architects, working on diverse projects, conscientiously pursue their agenda, putting values above architectural fads and trends. And although it is currently difficult to point to an office in Poland whose work is characterized by a similar ideological approach, the implementation of a specific program or search within a selected issue - be it common spaces, as in the case of Grafton Architects, orcreative adaptations by Lacaton & Vassal, the successive editions of the international awards seem to confirm that it is the ideological program, the set of values enshrined in architecture and specialization in a specific area of construction that is most appreciated in the world today.
McNamara and Farrell established their office in Dublin in 1978, at the same time developing their teaching activities, including at University College Dublin, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Yale and EPFL in Lausanne. All of their work has already been recognized twice: in 2020, the architects received two prestigious awards - the Pritzker Prize (cf. A&B 06/2020) and the RIBA Gold Medal. Their individual projects have also received multiple awards. In 2008, the Università Luigi Bocconi building in Milan, which they designed, was named World Building of the Year, and their exhibition at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, dedicated in part to the UTEC University building in Lima, was awarded the Silver Lion. The building itself, upon completion, was awarded the RIBA International Prize.
The European Union's Mies van der Rohe Prize was awarded this year to the Kingston University Town House building in London projek
photo by Ed Reeve
At the Venice Architecture Biennale, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara returned in 2018 as curators of the event. The slogan they chose, "Freespace," was meant to describe architecture's constructed space of freedom of body, creation, mind, democratic ideas and concern for the common good. The ideas that the architects wrote down in a manifesto published before the Biennale best describe their approach to architecture, which they also tried to transfer to the exhibition. Criticized for their lack of precision in defining the directions for interpreting the Biennial slogan, they still remained consistent in promoting the ideas they themselves were trying to put into practice. The very way in which the main exhibition at the Arsenal was constructed, moreover, showed their strong commitment to architectural practice - individual teams were given "plots" to "develop." They themselves wrote in the manifesto that they "see the land as a client." However, trying to translate the language of everyday architectural practice into the very different medium of text and exhibition proved somewhat breakneck. It was quite different in the case of Town House, a building that can successfully serve as Grafton Architects' spatial manifesto, using the medium they know best - architecture.
In awarding the 2021 Stirling Prize, Norman Foster, on behalf of the entire jury, said that Town House "is a theater of life - a storehouse of ideas. In this highly original work of architecture, silent reading, loud performance, research and science can coexist wonderfully. This is no mean feat." This mix, however, stems not from the architects' idea, but from the investor's assumptions, which, by their own admission, proved to be one of the greatest inspirations. A progressive vision of a place of learning, where different functions and elements can overlap and intertwine while maintaining their own identity, resulted in the design of a complex, multifunctional educational space, where the most important thing is to be together or side by side, visual and physical connections that encourage meetings and scientific and social exchanges. The emotional dimension of the project and the space created by the architects is also pointed out by the Mies van der Rohe Prize jurors, who wrote in their justification about "a building that creates an emotional experience" on many different levels, spaces that intertwine not only with each other, but connect with city life and enhance the quality of life through education and being together.
The European Union's Mies van der Rohe Prize was awarded this year to the Kingston University Town House building in London projek
photo by Ed Reeve
Surrounded by countless expansive terraces and arcades, the building houses a library, reading rooms, group and individual work rooms, dance studios and performance spaces - all spread over several levels of the open-plan organized building. They are open to the public for all to see. As an added incentive to visit the building, there are terraces partially accessible from the outside, as well as public functions located on the first floor - including a lively atrium with a café connected to the roof terrace. All users of the building, whether university employees, students or visitors, always have the opportunity to look into every corner of the building and make visual contact. In order to maintain a comfortable learning environment, spaces that require silence and concentration have been located on the upper floors, separated from the direct flow of visitors.
The transparency of the building, its public function and its "porous" structure add up to a remarkably sincere facility. This sincerity, however, is not only about function and the ideas behind it, but also about materials and construction. This, by the way, is also a trademark of Grafton Architects - the creation of spatial structures, captivating by their mass, play of light, flow and presence of people in spaces of undefined shape, which can be used in many ways. The building blocks and walls that build the interiors are usually massive, made of natural, raw materials such as concrete, stone or brick. They set the framework for public places, which are separated from the outside world and each other by visually dematerializing glazed expanses. In this way, the architects bring the urbanity of the city to an architectural scale, not operating with corridors, halls and staircases, but rather with a sequence of public and semi-public spaces flowing through the building and its immediate surroundings on multiple levels. Such solutions are ideally seen in the Milan University, where overhanging, massive volumes "draw" the street space into the building. In the case of Town House, the authors opted for a more openwork structure.
The European Union's Mies van der Rohe Prize was awarded this year to the Kingston University Town House building in London projek
photo by Ed Reeve
Somewhat monumental in scale, the six-story building has been made lighter by concrete columns running through its entire height. They lend permeability and porosity to the building's structure, inviting passersby and users of the building to take advantage of the expansive terraces and exterior stairs located between the interior and exterior. The same raw concrete structure is exposed in the building's interiors. Cascades of successive floors, stairs, lumps of rooms and rhythmic concrete razor blades on the walls create a peculiar internal landscape of learning, unshaken by structural divisions. The element that formally binds the building to its surroundings is the brick used on the exterior facade, which, like the wooden elements inside, slightly warms the architecture with a strongly industrial character.
The project of the La Borda Cooperative housing cooperative in Barcelona - a special mention for the Spanish office Lacol in this year's edition of the Mies van der Rohe Award competition.
photo by Lacol | photo by Baku Akazawa
The building's impressive concrete structure, however, was also what caused the most controversy among architecture critics, after the building was awarded the Sterling Prize. First and foremost, the building was erected on the site of a demolished, prefabricated structure that once contained offices and meeting spaces for students. While this is part of the revitalization efforts underway on campus, such an approach contradicts the idea of adaptive reuse, which first involves adapting existing structures to reduce the negative impact of building on the environment. At a time of climate crisis, when construction is responsible for some 40 percent of global carbon emissions, Grafton Architects is proposing an elegant concrete structure for which not even an embodied carbon assessment has been conducted. Environmental issues seem to be crucial today in selecting projects, but also in indicating trends - a function served by the prestigious awards with which Town House has been recognized.
Defenders of Town House point out that new buildings are still needed, because not all functions can be realized in adapted existing structures. Also, the quality of the architecture itself is supposed to allow for a long building life or adaptations to changing programs and functions. It seems, however, that the realization of a sustainable building with a socially necessary function does not have to entail such environmentally taxing solutions and technologies based on concrete. However, the authors' lack of commitment to climate issues does not invalidate the building's significant values, its contribution to the development of typologies and the shaping of open, egalitarian academic space.
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This year, the jury of the European Union Prize for Mies van der Rohe Contemporary Architecture also awarded a special honor to a promising studio - it went to the Barcelona office Lacol for its design of the La Borda Cooperative housing cooperative in the Catalan capital.
Kacper Kępiński
Illustrations provided courtesy of the Mies van der Rohe Foundation.
