Department of Finance, Temple Bar Square included in wide portfolio

GRAFTON ARCHITECTS has won numerous awards for its work in Ireland since the practice was founded 30 years ago by the late Frank Hall, along with Shelley McNamara, Yvonne Farrell, Shay Cleary and Tony Murphy. Of the original founders, only Farrell and McNamara remain.

They were joined by other talented architects such as Ger Carty and Philippe O'Sullivan in what is still a relatively small practice, with a two-storey studio in Dame Court, Dublin, that's filled with architectural models - evidence of the way they work.

Grafton's most noteworthy recent building in Ireland is the Department of Finance's offices on Merrion Row, adjoining the Huguenot Cemetery, a stone building that bears some similarities (apart from its small scale) to Bocconi's new Faculty Building in Milan. Much of their work involves public projects, such as the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering building in Trinity College, a distinctive basalt cube which was completed in 1999, or the Killarney Road bridge on the N11 (1995), designed with engineers Roughan O'Donovan.

Grafton Architects was also among the nine practices that came together to form Group 91, first for Making a Modern Street , a housing scheme for the Liberties - and then the Temple Bar Architectural Framework Plan, also in 1991.

Its own contribution to the area was Temple Bar Square, now partially privatised by restaurants and cafés on the ground floor of a dull north-facing, grey brick apartment building flanked on one side by three rather dated lighting masts. But the intentions were good.

Grafton formed a fruitful relationship with Meath Council to build civic offices in Dunshaughlin, which won the top prize in the 2001 Opus Building Awards, and the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan.

Schools have been another pre-occupation of the practice. Projects in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan; Celbridge, Co Kildare, and Ballinasloe, Co Galway, were widely seen as raising the bar for school design; Ard Scoil Mhuire in Ballinasloe won the AAI Downes Medal in 2004.

Grafton gained international recognition when the Ballinasloe school and two other projects were included in Phaidon's Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture.Although it was extraordinary to find Farrell and McNamara working for Zoe Developments (Carroll used to call them "the girls"), they have not been afraid of commercial projects, and were among a team of well-known architects working on the town centre for Adamstown.

They also designed a 200-bedroom "no star" hotel behind the Vicar Street venue in the Liberties for developer Harry Crosbie; it has yet to be built. Much earlier, they did a mews building behind Merrion Square containing a 30-seat cinema.

Though Grafton Architects does not have a "house style", there are common in its concerns about context, the use of materials and the idea of buildings as sculpted objects in the landscape, urban or rural. Everything is carefully considered. One of Grafton's most intriguing projects involves the former municipal dump in Dunsink - 1,040 acres of "stunningly beautiful" landscape, as Farrell says. Proposals include themed gardens, riding, water sports and an outdoor auditorium linked to Dunsink Observatory.

In 2006, Shelley became the first architect to be elected to Aosdána, the elite body of artists; her long-time partner is the painter Michael Kane. She is also a sister of Bernard McNamara, the building contractor and property developer.