Explore UCD

UCD Home >

Venice Architecture Biennale to be curated by UCD adjunct professors

Posted January 19, 2017

  • Pair will explore how architecture can improve society
  • Their firm won the 2016 RIBA International Prize

Founders of RIBA prize-winning (opens in a new window)Grafton Architects, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, will lead the programming for the (opens in a new window)architecture section of the 2018 Venice Biennale

Farrell and McNamara are both University College Dublin graduates and adjunct professors in UCD School of Architecture. They will build on the 2016 theme that offered a critical overview of architecture as a means of improving society.

The Venice Biennale is an art exhibition that was founded in 1895 and is the longest running biennale in the world. The architecture exhibition will run from May to November 2018.

Pictured (l-r): Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, founders of Grafton Architects

Grafton Architects won the (opens in a new window)2016 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) International Prize for its design of the Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnologia (UTEC) in Lima, Peru.

Farrell and McNamara have previously served as jury members for several architectural awards. These include the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2008, the Mies Van Der Rohe Prize in 2011 and the RIBA Award in 2012.

The pair held the Kenzo Tange chair at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2010 and Louis Kahn chair at Yale in 2011. They are Fellows of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and International Honorary Fellows of RIBA.

By: Jonny Baxter, digital journalist, UCD University Relations