RIBA Stirling Prize 2022

The RIBA have announced the shortlist for their annual Stirling Prize, the most prestigious architecture award in the UK. It is presented to the architect of the building chosen as the year’s most significant for the progression of architecture and the built environment.

One of the six buildings shortlisted for the coveted prize is 100 Liverpool Street by Hopkins Architects - a transformation of a 1980s office building into a high-quality, flexible 21st century commercial building. The design blends the good of the existing building with modern innovation, retaining the existing foundations and a lot of the original steelwork but adding three new office floors with extensive terraces and rooftop gardens at upper levels.

The Falkirk Campus for Forth Valley College is another one of the nominees, designed by Reiach and Hall Architects. The campus replaced a near 60 year old building that had reached the end of its useful life, but pays respects to the architecture of the era with long, low-slung elevations that nod to the setting. The building is organised in a grid, with courtyards, streets, open learning spaces and closed classrooms working together to create a vibrant environment for learning. The project demonstrates great care, coordination and craftsmanship which is evident with the rooflights that flood the interior with light lined and sculpted with a rich ochre acoustic Valchromat and integrated LED lighting strips.

Hackney New Primary School was a project enabled by a new housing block, punctuating a busy junction on the Kingsland Road. Its immense size challenges the norms of educational buildings, but internally the removal of corridors forms an inner world of a closely-knit courtyard and classrooms. The courtyard is very much the heart of the site and the architects, Henley Halebrown, were required to show their invention to deliver the required light and ventilation for all necessary areas of the scheme. This sculptural pink building is a worthy nominee for this year’s top prize.

Orchard Gardens at Elephant Park in London by Panter Hudspith Architects comprises 228 homes and 2,500sqm of retail and cultural spaces. The project is a large part of Elephant & Castle’s regeneration and occupies an entire city block. The buildings were designed to be viewed as a cluster, wrapping around a communal garden with sophisticated and contrasting scales, ranging from five to 19 storeys. The ways the different elevations are composited enhances the quality of placemaking around the site, creating a welcoming neighbourhood without appearing contrived. The judges recognised the excellence of creating such a scheme in a dense and challenging sector.

Another London-based project to make the shortlist came from Mae Architects who carried out the development of the new Sands End Art and Community Centre on the northwest corner of Fulham’s South Park. It comprises several new connected pavilions arranged around the existing disused Clancarty Lodge, which was refurbished as part of the same project. The driving force for the project was the local council’s arts strategy of improving access to cultural activities for the widely diverse local community and the outcome was a flexible facility with a welcoming lobby that frames views through to the central courtyard and the park beyond that.

On the outside, a skin of honey-toned brick forms gable and external walls.

The last project to make the shortlist comes from Niall McLaughlin Architects who developed a new library for Magdalene College. The library was designed to replace one that had existed for 300 years after being gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys. The new library combines load-bearing brickwork with exquisitely detailed horizontal engineered timber structure to establish a lofty, surprisingly vertical space with a complex three-dimensional tartan grid. It offers a great diversity of spaces to read and work and its planned longevity of 400 years is reflected in how the barely half filled bookshelves make the building feel nicely slack with an extraordinary sense of expanse, like being in a luxurious treehouse.

These six projects demonstrate the power of exceptional architecture to enhance lives which RIBA president Simon Allford highlighted when commenting on the shortlist.

The winner will be announced on Thursday October 13th at RIBA, 66 Portland Place in London.