Madam, - An esteemed international jury saw fit to honour Grafton Architects, founded by Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrel, with the "World Building of the Year" award at the World Festival of Architecture in Barcelona, for the design of the new facility at Bocconi University in that city (The Irish Times, October 27th).
Take a bow, Grafton Architects, and by extension, Irish architecture. Three other Irish projects made the shortlist, in individual categories.
In these bleak times, the nation should rejoice that we have such a recognised repository of talent and achievement. Grafton Architects, among many others, have contributed greatly to the quality of many Irish educational buildings. But with many of their colleagues, they are enduring the trauma of declaring hundreds of talented architects redundant.
Few would dispute that the quality of our education system will determine the future wellbeing of this society. Yet we have contrived procurement and planning systems which make the delivery of decent teaching facilities tortuous and counter-productive. One immediate manifestation has been the delayed payments to architects, some of whom have been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy.
There is a high probability that in some strands of our procurement systems, architects of the calibre of Grafton Architects would not make the cut, simply because they could not "tick as many boxes" as designers of generic buildings in other jurisdictions. At a time when we risk dissipating the talent, skills and experience of the design and construction sectors, there is an urgent need to pause, reflect and prioritise the use of our finite resources.
A good starting point would be to admit that there are fault lines in our system. We also need to believe that we have the imaginative capacity to conceive of new alliances and means of delivering quality buildings to the nation's children in a challenging context.
There is a huge repository of goodwill and problem-solving capacity in the profession I represent. I live in hope that Minister O'Keeffe will be open to creative and positive dialogue in a forthcoming meeting. - Yours, etc,