Grafton Architects co-founders Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell have just made history. The pair was recently awarded the celebrated Pritzker Architecture Prize, marking the first-ever time a pair of female business partners has earned the distinction. Established in 1979 by Chicago’s esteemed billionaire Pritzker family, the award is known as the Nobel of the architecture industry. Per the prize’s official website, the distinction recognizes living architects who demonstrate “talent, vision, and commitment… [with] significant contributions to humanity and the built environment.” The prize has been previously bestowed on female winners, but never more than one at a time. On top of that, McNamara and Farrell are also the accolade’s first Irish recipients.
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 ad...