Irish architecture firms shortlisted for Mies van der Rohe Award

Nine Irish architectural practices have been shortlisted for the 2015 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – the Mies van der Rohe Award. Some 420 studios were selected from 35 countries for the €60,000 biennial prize, the highest award in European architecture.

Of the nine projects, which have to have been completed within the previous two years, five are in Ireland, two are in the UK, one is in Norway and one is in Denmark.

"Irish architects bring something special to the table," says Sandra O'Connell, editor of Architecture Ireland and of the RIAI's Annual Review.

The practices selected for the 2015 Mies award are: McGarry Ní Éanaigh for Coláiste Ailigh, a secondary school in Letterkenny, Co Donegal; Michael Kelly and Dan Costelloe for The Cow House, a residential project that used specially-engineered windows and creatively used local materials; Solearth for Airfield Evolution that has brought a sense of the countryside into suburban Dublin; Waterford City Architects for the stone-facaded Waterford Medieval Museum in the city’s historic Viking Quarter; A2 Architects for a sculpture park pavilion in Norway on the site of a former paper mill that houses an installation by artist John Gerrard; and Belfast-based Hall McKnight for Vartov Square, a new public space adjacent to the City Hall in Copenhagen.

“It is their connection with landscape and an understanding of context. The standard of Irish architecture hasn’t fallen off during the recession, rather it has become internationally recognised for its contribution,” O’Connell says citing the several international awards won in recent years by Irish practices.

In 2008, at the World Architecture Festival, Grafton Architects won the World Building of the Year Award for the Università Luigi Bocconi in Milan. They were a finalist in the Mies award the following year and in 2012 won the Silver Lion at the 12th International Venice Biennale.

Of the six practices shortlisted for the 2013 UK-based Riba Stirling Prize, three were Irish: the Giant’s Causeway visitors’ centre by Heneghan Peng; Bishop Edward King Chapel at Cuddesdon by Niall McLaughlin; and the University of Limerick Medical School and Pergola bus shelter. The latter two practices are also nominated for this year’s Mies award for those projects.

Last September, Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey of O’Donnell & Tuomey, were awarded the Royal Gold Medal, a lifetime achievement.

See Miesarch. com