GRAFTON ARCHITECTS, run by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, who won the first “World Building of the Year” award last October for their Bocconi University faculty building in Milan, has been pipped at the post for Europe’s biggest architectural prize. The European Union’s “Mies van der Rohe Award” for 2009 has been won by Norwegian architects Snohetta for the National Opera and Ballet in Oslo. “It is more than just a building. It is first an urban space, a gift to the city,” said jury chairman Francis Rambert.
Grafton was one of only five finalists for the €60,000 prize along with Snohetta and Massimiliano Fuksas (for Zenith Music Hall, Strasbourg), French architects Atelier Marc Barani (Multimodal Centre, Nice) and Spain’s RCR Architects (library and senior citizens centre, Barcelona).
The finalists were chosen from a 340-strong shortlist.
Previous winners of the “Mies van der Rohe Award” include Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Dominique Perrault and Peter Zumthor, who was recently awarded the Pritzker Prize. A special prize for emerging architects went to Studio Up for a gymnasium in Koprivnica, Croatia.
