World Building of the Year Winners Speak at UB Tonight

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, principles of Grafton Architects, Dublin, and winners of the first World Building of the Year Award in 2008, will present the 2009 Bethune Lecture sponsored by the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning this evening (February 9) at 5:30 p.m. in 301 Crosby Hall on the UB south campus.

The illustrated lecture, named for Buffalo architect Louise Blanchard Bethune, the first professional woman architect in the United States, will offer McNamara and Farrell the opportunity to discuss their winning faculty building for the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan.

McNamara studied at University College Dublin, graduating in 1974, and established Grafton Architects with Yvonne Farrell in 1977. A member of Group '91 Architects, she has taught at University College Dublin since 1976 and has lectured in Britain and Jordan.

The annual Bethune lecture is sponsored by the Buffalo/Western New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the UB School of Architecture and Planning. It celebrates the life and professional work of Bethune, a graduate of Hutchinson Technical Institute whom, in 1888, became the first woman member of the American Institute of Architects.

Her firm designed several hundred buildings throughout New York state, many of them in the Romanesque revival style popular in the late 19th century. Buffalo's Lafayette Hotel in Lafayette Square is considered her masterpiece.