Two Irish architects have scooped a top world prize for a brutalist university building

AT A TIME when brutalist buildings are due to be torn down across the Dublin city centre, two Irish architects have scooped a prestigious international architecture prize with a Peruvian building designed in the same style.

Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects won the first-ever RIBA International Prize for designing the new Engineering University in the Peruvian capital of Lima.

Brutalist architecture commonly refers to concrete, block-like buildings constructed from the 1950s through to the 1970s. Well-known examples in Dublin include Hawkins House, Apollo House, O’Connell Street House and College House.

The prize, awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects, was chosen by a panel chaired by renowned architect Lord Richard Rogers.

Dublin’s Grafton Architects were praised by the jury for creating an entirely new way of thinking about public buildings. The university campus won praise as a “modern-day Machu Picchu”. Speaking about the building, the RIBA jury said:

“UTEC is an exceptional example of civil architecture – a building designed with people at its heart.

The new Engineering University building in Lima

“Grafton Architects have created a new way to think about a university campus, with a distinctive ‘vertical campus’ structure responding to the temperate climatic conditions and referencing Peru’s terrain and heritage,” the RIBA statement added.

“Sitting on the border of two residential districts in Lima, in sections UTEC perches tantalisingly on the edge of a ravine.

“Seen from across the ravine it is as bold and as pure a statement of the symbiosis between architecture and engineering as could be imagined; a piece of geology imposed on its pivotal site, mirroring the organic curve of the landscape and accommodating itself in the city.

“To its close neighbours, it is a series of landscaped terraces with clefts, overhangs and grottos, a modern-day Machu Picchu.

The worst examples of brutalist style are frequently criticised for shutting off buildings from their immediate environment, but a new breed of brutalist buildings seeks to update the genre in a more sympathetic style.

Grafton Architects won the World Building of the Year Award in 2008 for a university building in Milan, and were also behind the redesign of the Department of Finance building in Dublin 2.

Farrell and McNamara also took home the Irish design industry’s top prize at this year’s Irish Design Awards, when they won the president’s choice award for outstanding achievement.

Grafton Architecture's Department of Finance building in Dublin 2.

In a joint statement, the pair said:

“For Grafton Architects, we found that the educational aspirations of the client together with the unique climatic conditions of Lima gave us the opportunity to ‘invent’ a new vertical campus for their new University of Engineering.”

The Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC) was built in the Barranco district of Lima.

Written by Darragh Peter Murphy and posted on TheJournal.ie