12. September 2023
Photo: Screenshot from “Shelley McNamara: Architecture Is About Humanism”
Marc-Christoph Wagner interviewed Shelley McNamara, Pritzker Prize laureate and partner with Yvonne Farrell in Grafton Architects, during the UIA World Congress of Architects in July for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Louisiana Channel.
The wide-ranging interview, seventeen minutes in length, touches on a number of subjects, from the crises architecture addresses these days and learning from architects like Francis Kéré, to listening to the communities where one works and working on their Universita Luigi Bocconi in Milan decades ago. Pervading the interview are optimism and, as the title indicates, the architect's belief in humanism: “In a way, you can’t be an architect without being optimistic. You are making something that is going to happen tomorrow. It is not there today, so you are thinking about the future… It’s about humanism in the end.”