Grafton awarded with 2022 Mies award

The 2022 Mies van der Rohe Award, the most important European architecture award, was conferred to Grafton for the City Hall - Kingston University in London.

Yvonne Farell was a lecturer at the Piran Architecture Days in 2009 and a member of the international jury for the 2009 Piranesi Prize. And what a coincidence: three of the nine speakers at the PDA 2009 are also recipients of the Pritzker Prize: Wang Shu (2012), Grafton (2020) and Diébédo Francis Kéré (2022). Among Pritzker's nominees in 2019 was Bijoj Jain. Other PDA lecturers are also recipients or nominees of prestigious international awards.

Town House – Kingston University, London, by Grafton Architects, Dublin, is the 2022 Prize Winner. It is rewarded for its remarkable environmental quality that creates an excellent atmosphere for studying, gathering, dancing and being together. The building creates an emotional experience from within and through the multi-level façade colonnade that creates a domestic atmosphere on different levels. It accommodates dance, library and study spaces using layers of silence and layers of sound which work perfectly well together. This is the first time that a university building wins the architecture prize, and it shows the potential of public educational projects with the quality of this one, which dignifies people’s lives through education and togetherness and gives equal educational possibilities to everybody.