The RSA Metzstein Architecture Discourse

Published by the Royal Scottish Academy, this volume looks at the work of Dublin-based Grafton Architects, and was produced to accompany the Metzstein Discourse 2019. It comprises an extensive interview with Yvonne Farrell and Shelly McNamara, conducted by Neil Gillespie, OBE, RSA and offers an in-depth look at the thought processes behind Grafton Architects' substantial body of work. Including over 30 photographs of existing work, sketches and future plans, the Grafton Architects publication is an addition to the previous RSA publications of Metzstein Discourses with Alvaro Siza, Glen Murcutt, Peter Zumthor and Sir David Chipperfield.

The Royal Scottish Academy Metzstein Discourse was founded in 2014 in memory of Isi Metzstein (1928-2012), partner of the Glasgow architectural practice of Gillespie Kidd and Coia, Professor of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, influential tutor at The Mackintosh School of Architecture at Glasgow School of Art, and Treasurer of the RSA. The idea has been to bring the very best architects and architectural thinkers in the world to Scotland, and to invite them to give a discourse. Isi Metzstein had very clear ideas about what architecture was, and could expound on it and other related subjects with profound insight, as well as with rabbinical rigour and wit. He was greatly loved by his friends and students, and he enjoyed informal debates with them in which he was highly entertaining. We hope that these discourses given in his memory will serve to continue and raise the level of architectural debate in Scotland. 

In 2019 Grafton Architects were invited to give the Discourse. Grafton Architects was established in 1978. Directors Yvonne Farrell & Shelley McNamara are both graduates of UCD, are Fellows of the RIAI, International Honorary Fellows of the RIBA and are elected members of Aosdána, the eminent Irish Art organisation. Teachers at the School of Architecture at University College Dublin from 1976 to 2002 and appointed adjunct Professors in 2015. They have held the Kenzo Tange chair at GSD Harvard and the Louis Kahn chair at Yale University and have been visiting professors at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland; Accademia d’Archittettura, Mendrisio, Switzerland, where they were appointed as full professors in 2013. They have been external examiners at numerous universities including Cambridge University and The London Metropolitan School of Architecture. As well as public lectures in Dublin and abroad, including the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and the Royal Academy in London, they have lectured widely in European and American Schools of Architecture.