Kevin Kieran award

Named after the late Kevin Kieran, architect, tutor and former consultant to the Arts Council, this award aims to support the artistic formation and career development of the architect and to direct funding towards architectural excellence and innovation.

The award offers an emerging and gifted architect an opportunity to develop and deliver a research project in the first instance. On completion of this research project, the architect will be contracted to design and run a building contract for the Office of Public Works (OPW).

The objectives of the Kevin Kieran award are:

  • to inform and develop the practice of an individual architect;
  • to facilitate research and innovation in architecture;
  • to draw and learn from best international practice;
  • to foster and develop emerging talent and ability within the artform
  • to support the development of architectural knowledge and culture in Ireland.
 
2003 Kevin Kieran recipient: Gráinne Hassett

The Necessary Contract

This research was carried out by an architect in practice, imagining and constructing buildings every day. An architect's practice draws on an engagement with history, with society, and with all prior practice. A curiously bounded type of creative process; it is played out through a relationship with technology and capital and is articulated with legal contracts. One senses that the starting points of the process have an impact on the ending points. Thinking of some artists, the same kind of engagement is noticeable.

Read full text: The necessary contract (0.16 MB, Adobe PDF) 

Bio

Gráinne Hassett

Gráinne Hassett established Hassett Ducatez Architects in Dublin in 1995, practising strategic urban design and the making of public and private buildings. The practice’s architectural awards include the 2008 AAI Downes Medal and six other Irish awards, in addition to several international awards/ exhibitions, most recently as part of the Lives of Spaces exhibit; 11th Architecture Biennale Venice 2008. Gráinne is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, University of Limerick, and has acted as visiting critic to Yokohama, Turin, Stockholm and Strathclyde Schools of Architecture. She was formerly design tutor at University College Dublin and Dublin Institute of Technology Schools of Architecture.

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