Mies Van der Rohe Awards 2022 for the best European architecture: a cultural center in London and a housing cooperative in Barcelona

• Farrell and McNamara Pritzker 2020

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, the Irish architects who founded the Grafton Architects studio, are

.

The architects, who have already received the Pritzker Prize for their work as a whole in 2020, are recognized this time for a specific project, the Town House of Kingston University, in south London.

The Mies van der Rohe is organized by the European Union and by the Foundation that bears the name of the German architect and has its headquarters in Barcelona.

The other category of the Mies Award, aimed at recognizing Energetic Architecture, has awarded the La Borda housing complex, a residential building in Barcelona built of wood and

.

The winners this time are not some architects but Lacol, the cooperative of owners and promoters of the building, an association of

who, each one from their specialization, appear as authors of the building.

As in its mercantile configuration, La Borda promotes a more communal and less individual way of life.

GRAFTON

Farrell and McNamanara's Town House is something of a cultural hub for Kingston University alumni.

The building mixes a library, rehearsal rooms and stages for performing arts.

Its authors define it in their memory as a "

, gathered in an envelope that unifies everything and in which opposites can happily coexist".

The architects have also written that "the interior of the building is defined by a structural system of precast concrete columns and beams that supports the exposed ribbed slabs. The quality of the interior spaces is influenced by the shape and finish of the structure, while that

."

The appearance of the building, almost brutalist from its façade to its hall, is compatible with the lightness of its uses.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

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