ARCHITECTS from Ireland

Top 5

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Irish Architects of all time. This list of famous Irish Architects is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Eileen Gray (1878 - 1976)

With an HPI of 60.70, Eileen Gray is the most famous Irish Architect.  Her biography has been translated into 27 different languages on wikipedia.

Eileen Gray (born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith; 9 August 1878 – 31 October 1976) was an Irish interior designer, furniture designer and architect who became a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. Over her career, she was associated with many notable European artists of her era, including Kathleen Scott, Adrienne Gorska, Le Corbusier, and the architect Jean Badovici, with whom she was romantically involved and who taught her architecture and collaborated with her on various buildings. Their most famous work is the house known as E-1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.

2. James Hoban (1762 - 1831)

With an HPI of 56.49, James Hoban is the 2nd most famous Irish Architect.  His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

James Hoban (1755 – December 8, 1831) was an Irish-American architect, best known for designing the White House.

3. Kevin Roche (1922 - 2019)

With an HPI of 55.58, Kevin Roche is the 3rd most famous Irish Architect.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Eamonn Kevin Roche (June 14, 1922 – March 1, 2019) was an Irish-born American Pritzker Prize-winning architect. Kevin Roche was the archetypal modernist and "member of an elite group of third generation modernist architects — James Stirling, Jorn Utzon, and Robert Venturi — and is considered to be the most logical and systematic designer of the group. He and his partner John Dinkeloo of the firm KRJDA produced over a half-century of matchless creativity." Roche and Dinkeloo were responsible for the design/master planning of over 200 built projects in both the U.S. and abroad. These projects include 8 museums, 38 corporate headquarters, 7 research facilities, performing arts centers, theaters, and campus buildings for six universities. In 1967 he created the master plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and thereafter designed all of the new wings and installation of many collections, including the reopened American and Islamic wings. Born in Dublin and a graduate from University College Dublin, Roche went to the United States to study with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In the U.S., he became the principal designer for Eero Saarinen and opened his own architectural firm in 1967. Among other awards, Roche received the Pritzker in 1982, the Gold Medal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1990, and the AIA Gold Medal in 1993.

4. Yvonne Farrell (b. 1951)

With an HPI of 51.72, Yvonne Farrell is the 4th most famous Irish Architect.  Her biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Yvonne Farrell (born 1951) is an Irish architect and academic. She is the co-founder, together with Shelley McNamara, of Grafton Architects, which won the World Building of the Year award in 2008 for their Bocconi University building in Milan. The practice won the inaugural RIBA International Prize in 2016 for their Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología building in Lima, Peru, and was awarded the 2020 Royal Gold Medal. In 2017 she was appointed, along with Shelley McNamara, as curator of the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2018. She won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2020, also with McNamara.

5. Shelley McNamara (b. 1952)

With an HPI of 49.19, Shelley McNamara is the 5th most famous Irish Architect.  Her biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Shelley McNamara (born 1952) is an Irish architect and academic. She attended University College Dublin and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Architecture. She founded Grafton Architects with Yvonne Farrell in 1978. Grafton rose to prominence in the early 2010s, specialising in stark, weighty but spacious buildings for higher education. McNamara has taught architecture at University College Dublin since 1976 and at several other universities. The Grafton practice was awarded the 2020 Royal Institute of British Architects Royal Gold Medal and their building for the Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología in Lima, Peru, was awarded the 2016 RIBA International Prize, as the best new building in the world that year. In 2021, the practice was awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize for the Town House building of Kingston University. McNamara and Farrell shared the 2020 Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest award.