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Grafton Architects Lecture - Vicent Ducatez
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On the subject of environmental architecture, the position of Grafton Architects is not to over-demonstrate but to add layers of understanding to the making of the building. In a very similar way the structure is used to strengthen the architectural intention. In Dunshaughlin, this approach is explicit. The double height space, needed for air movement, gives the inner scale to the building and allows the low winter sun to bounce on the exposed concrete soffit, itself chosen to reinforce the spatial concept. In Le Corbusier's post war buildings, similar concerns are at play: robust structure set against ordinary materials, simple and efficient environmental controls, and the constant changes of scale of the human being and the greater order.

References to Le Corbusier's work are clearly established (ref. to Grafton Architect's profile by Gandon Editions) not as a mannerist short hand but to reveal the extent of architectural knowledge and shared dialogue that surround the projects. Their method of working was a strong sub-text of the lecture, with the explicit discussion of the inter-relationships of projects but also with acknowledgement to individuals involved. In a similar way, the legendary daily coffee-break's discussions, where projects are reviewed for their architectural and intellectual principles, is exemplary of the collegiate nature of the process.

In Milan, Grafton Architects reached a new scale, unprecedented but latent in their work: a complex of offices, libraries, student facilities, lecture rooms and an Aula Magna forming one edge of the private Bocconi University, in a disparate urban fabric. The project forms a new entrance as it serves as a meeting point of students, teachers, research, lectures and the general public. The site, a narrow strip facing a busy street on the small edge and a block of apartments along its length, dictated a compact and tall volume punctuated by light shafts. The strategy retained is simple and efficient. The Aula Magna creates the new face of the University on the street. The remaining lecture halls are grouped in a deep basement, the offices are suspended overhead and the student's forum occupies the interstitial world at ground floor, peeping up or down to the depth of the built mass. Finally, the libraries, specific to each department, are stacked almost randomly in a narrow sliver, forming a gigantic prismatic bas-relief to the apartment block.

Against this daunting scale, Grafton Architects presented different elements, exploring the intrinsic materiality of the architectural intents through a series of beautiful drawings, revealing the ease, logic and joy that seem to prevail.