Some kind of congratulations are due to the Royal Institute of British Architects for choosing as this year’s winners of the royal gold medal for architecture the Irish practice Grafton. For Grafton Architects is run by two women, Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, which means that for the second time since Queen Victoria awarded the first such medal in 1848, it has gone outright to members of the same sex as the late queen-empress. On two other occasions, women have won the prize together with their husband-colleagues.
This year, the RIBA could hardly have done otherwise, given a campaign by an action group called Part W to highlight the scarcity of women among the winners of the gold medal and the world’s other top awards for architecture. It is flabbergasting that this conversation still has to be had now, in 2019. Still, baby steps. The choice of Grafton can’t be faulted, either – they are outstanding architects.
But there’s another question around such awards. It’s the underlying assumption that they should recognise an inspired individual – or at most two such – about whose neck the medal might be hung. For while such individuals exist, architecture is an exceptionally collaborative business. It requires multiple talents within a particular practice, as it is rare for one person to combine the creative, technical and managerial skills to realise a building of any size and it requires clients, builders, engineers and others to make a building happen. It requires the people who use and experience a building to bring it to life.
The myth of the brilliant auteur, exemplified by the figure of Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s unintentionally hilarious The Fountainhead, is as much damaging as inspiring. In her 1943 novel, the hero (played by Gary Cooper in the subsequent movie) dynamites a housing block when he finds that his designs have been compromised. The message is clear: genius trumps all. Damn the bureaucrats! Damn the pettifoggers! Dupe the client! Bully the builders! Damn the budget!
It is built into the value system of architecture – the ways in which it is taught, published, recognised and awarded – that the most desirable possible outcome of a career is to be a celebrated maker of singular objects, of buildings that can be admired as you would a painting or a symphony. This fits awkwardly with the profession’s current desire to be as green as possible, as the best thing for the planet will generally be not to build something new but to find a smart way of reusing what is already there.
It’s a little simplistic to gender-code individualistic and collaborative architecture, even if, with exceptions such as the late Zaha Hadid, the rule-breaking-inspired-genius figure generally seems to imply a lot of testosterone. But it would be no bad thing if the RIBA followed up on this year’s tap on its (doubtless beautifully designed) glass ceiling by honouring more architects who are both female and not wannabe Howard Roarks. There is quite a queue of under-recognised women they could choose from.
It’s a start that the prize is to Grafton Architects – that is to say, a whole practice – rather than its two principals alone. Next year, the RIBA could try honouring (for example) Kate Macintosh, who was rumoured to be in the running this time. She spent most of her career in the offices of local authorities, for the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth, and the county councils of East Sussex and Hampshire, rather than in a practice under her own name.
Rather than the museums and airports that tend to win awards, she designed such useful things as council housing, sheltered homes for old people and fire stations. They also happen to be beautiful works of architecture.
• Rowan Moore is the Observer’s architecture correspondent
