© Abiola Noibi 2014
RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Astley Castle
Year 2013 Architect Witherford Watson and Man Actual Cost ÂŁ1.35m million Time 2007-2012 Building type Conservation - Castle Country United Kingdom
This sensitive scheme places the new building at the heart of the old, demonstrating creativity, preservation and conservation. In a 12th century fortified manor, further damaged by fire in 1978, the architects have created a new house that allows Landmark Trust guests to experience life in a near thousand-year-old castle with distinctly 21st century mod cons. Astley Castle demonstrates that working within sensitive historic contexts requires far more than the specialist skills of the conservation architect: this is an important piece of architecture, beautifully detailed and crafted. The decision to put the bedrooms and bathrooms on the ground floor and the communal spaces above makes the experience of the house very special as perhaps the most impressive spaces are the outdoor Tudor and Jacobean ruins. 1
RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Sainsbury Laboratory
Year 2012 Architect Stanton Williams Actual Cost £65 million Time 2008-2011 Building type Laboratory Country United Kingdom An architectural promenade forms the heart of a building which celebrates botanical research through interaction, communication and a connection with nature. From the front to the back, the building progresses from a grand, colonnaded façade to an open balcony and glazed public café, set within a botanic garden. At ground level the entrance gently ramps down through the auditorium and meeting areas. At the upper level the scientists work on illuminated stages, with research and write-up areas forming the ends of two promenades, flanked by small spontaneous brainstorming spaces. Sustainability through flexibility in long-term use is achieved through an adaptable façade behind the limestone pillar façade, enabling the research spaces to grow and change as required by the scientists. Despite the high energy demands of laboratories, the building has achieved a BREEAM excellent rating, aided by 1,000 square metres of photovoltaic panels and extensive natural lighting even in the laboratories. These top-lit labs are arranged on one floor in an L-shape, encouraging interaction between scientists.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Evelyn Grace Academy
Year 2011 Architect Zaha Hadid Budget £35 million Actual Cost £38 million Time 2006-2010 Building type Educational Building - School Country United Kingdom RIBA President Angela Brady said, ‘The Evelyn Grace Academy is an exceptional example of what can be achieved when we invest carefully in a well-designed new school building. The result – a highly imaginative, exciting academy that shows the students, staff and local residents that they are valued – is what every school should and could be. The unique design, expertly inserted into an extremely tight site, celebrates the school’s sports specialism throughout its fabric, with drama and views of student participation at every contortion and turn. Evelyn Grace Academy is a very worthy winner of architecture’s most prestigious award and I am delighted to present Zaha Hadid Architects with this accolade’. Zaha Hadid said, ‘It is very significant that our first project in London is the Evelyn Grace. Schools are among the first examples of architecture that everyone experiences and have a profound impact on all children as they grow up. I am delighted that the Evelyn Grace Academy has been so well received by all its students and staff’.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
MAXXI National Museum
Year 2010 Architect Zaha Hadid Actual Cost â‚Ź150 million Time 1998-2009 Building type Educational Building - Museum Country Rome MAXXI was described as a building for the staging of art, and while provocative on many levels, this project demonstrated a maturity and calmness that belied the complexities of its form and organisation. The nature of the project meant that throughout the design process the architects had no idea what the series of rooms would be used to hang, so walls that would bear a ton of rusting steel might be graced by miniatures. In addition to the innovative hanging, video projections bounce off the white curves, animating the spaces.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Maggie’s Centre
Year 2009 Architect Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners Actual Cost £2.1 million Time 2001-2008 Building type Hospital Country United Kingdom How could a building generate an immediate sense of welcome, serenity and even love on a frantic Hammersmith thoroughfare in the shadow of a dauntingly huge NHS hospital? Rogers Stirk Harbour’s quietly confident building unquestionably provided a haven for those diagnosed with cancer. The architects’ achievement is in having created a completely informal, home-like sanctuary for cancer patients.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Accordia Living
Year 2008 Architect Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Alison Brooks Architects, Maccreanor Lavington Actual Cost £80 million Time 2003–2006 (phase 1) 2003-2011 (phases 2 and 3) Building type Residential – Social Housing Country United Kingdom The Stirling judges awarded it the prize as a scheme that they felt could push things forward in a very ordinary way. It was an exhilarating project that adhered to the tenets of modernism, reinstated values that were lost from housing in the latter part of the 20th century and delivered light and fresh air at high density. Accordia, the judges felt, marked a shift in British housing, sending a message that good housing matters as the place where people’s lives and their attitudes to society are shaped to an industry that had for too long been anti-design and to politicians who had regarded housing in terms of targets to be achieved. Accordia demonstrates that British cities need more of a masterplan, a collaborative approach and an eye for both the detail and the big picture in landscape and architecture.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Marbach Museum of Modern Literature
Year 2007 Architect David Chipperfield Architects Actual Cost €10 million Time 2002-2006 Building type Educational – Museum Country Germany There were many things to praise about this building – the architect’s control and discrimination in the choice of materials has by now become a signature – but above all it is in the handling of the ‘difficult whole’ that the building excels. This is a building that is simultaneously rich and restrained, a trick that Chipperfield pulls off as well as any architect working today. To create an environment that would draw people to look at books and manuscripts that they cannot read more than a page or two of (except by arrangement) was a tough brief. Chipperfield responded by making a building that itself made up half of the visitor experience; it is if not a temple then a shrine to the soul of a literate nation.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Madrid Barajas Airport
Year 2006 Architect Richard Rogers Partnership Actual Cost £448 million Time 1997-2005 Building type Airport Country Spain Graduated colour is used for wayfinding – your boarding pass is marked with a colour and your route is instantly apparent as red gives way to orange, orange to yellow, yellow to green and green to blue. This device is carried through to the external structure, giving the whole building a joyful exuberance. A restrained and functional approach was consistently taken throughout to great effect, resulting in a visually clean, remarkably uncluttered and soothing environment. After six years of construction, the complex doubled the capacity of the existing airport and also rapidly established Madrid as the gateway between South America and Europe, making the city a southern European hub to rival the north European hubs of Heathrow and Amsterdam.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
The Scottish Parliament
Year 2005 Architect EMBT / RMJM Ltd Actual Cost £414 million Time 1999-2004 Building type Government - Parliament Country United Kingdom The Stirling judges were almost unanimous in their praise for the building. Charles Jencks said, ‘This building explores new territory for Scottish identity and for architecture. In the era of the iconic building, it creates an iconology of references to nature and the locale, using complex messages as a substitute for the one-liner. Instead of being a monumental building, as is the usual capital landmark, it nestles its way into the environment, an icon of organic resolution, of knitting together nature and culture into a complex union’. Judge Piers Gough said, ‘…This is a passionate industry, where the architects bring to it poetry, beauty, magnificence and that’s of course what the Scottish Parliament has’.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
The Gherkin
Year 2004 Architect Foster and Partners Actual Cost £138 million Time 2001-2003 Building type Commercial - Office Country United Kingdom The shape, which has been likened to a gherkin, is aerodynamic in form and maximises the amount of natural lighting. Windows onto the building’s atria also provide natural ventilation. The resulting office block uses 50% less energy than a conventional building. One side of the office zone adjacent to a light well is offered as a communal service area. Usually, and particularly in high-rise developments, such areas are relegated to some windowless corner. Here, by contrast, whether socialising, photocopying or making tea, staff are treated to magnificent views of the City. Internally the ground floor lift lobby is suitably elegant, and the bar area at the top responds to the challenges and opportunities of elevation, situation and 360-degree views, making it one of the very best rooms in 21st century London. At last London is claiming back the vantage points that it deserves. If only security limitations allowed it to be publicly accessible‌
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
The Laban Centre
Year 2003 Architect Hezrog and de Meuron Actual Cost £23.8 million Time 2000-2003 Building type Dance Centre Country United Kingdom The Laban Centre is a school of contemporary dance based in south London. The colourful transparent building designed by Herzog & de Meuron was intended to show off the dancers’ silhouettes and to glow when lit up at night. It also gave Deptford a significant and beautiful new landmark. At the heart of the building is a 300-seat theatre and on the lower level, offices, a library and a cafeteria. Studio spaces of different shapes, sizes and colours are on the upper level. The architects collaborated with the artist Michael Craig-Martin to select the palette of colours used for the panels. Mounted in front of the glass, the panels serve as a protective sun shield, improving the building’s energy efficiency and are objects of beauty in their own right. The building is inventive in the way that its form reveals the choreography of movement. The public spaces are full of wit – exemplified in detail such as the curving handrail, which counters the hard line of the dance studio bar. The extent of innovation in the project is apparent throughout, but never shouted. It is a graceful building, generous in its relationship 11
RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Gateshead Millennium Bridge
Year 2002 Architect Wilkinson Eyre Actual Cost £22 million Time 2000-2001 Building type Bridge Country United Kingdom The Gateshead Millennium Bridge is one of the most successful millennium projects. Linking the newly regenerated quaysides of Newcastle and Gateshead, it was the latest addition to the five bridges that make up the famous Tyneside skyline. The brief called for a footbridge that met the ground on each riverbank. Others, because of the Tyne’s steep gorge, do so further inland. This was likely to mean a steep gradient (or steps) if there was to be sufficient clearance even for small craft, making it inaccessible to wheelchair users or all but the fittest cyclists. Wilkinson Eyre instead proposed a curved deck to reduce the gradient. This in turn suggested a solution to the other part of the brief: a mechanism for allowing the occasional passage of taller ships. The architects’ elegant answer to this was to pivot the bridge at either end so that it could be hinged open.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Magna Centre
Year 2001 Architect Wilkinson Eyre Actual Cost £46 million Time 2001 Building type Science Centre Country United Kingdom Wilkinson Eyre Architects transformed this former steelworks in Rotherham into a science adventure centre. The black painted exterior was no preparation for the interior, a dramatic and colourful display, telling the story of steel. The shell of the building and much of the original machinery were retained to give visitors a picture of how the steel works operated. In addition, four new pavilions were built, each corresponding to one of the four elements defined by Aristotle: earth, fire, water and air. Artefacts from the building’s past were retained as evocative sculptures, while video walls recalled the human story of steel making.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Peckham Library
Year 2000 Architect Alsop and Stormer Actual Cost £5 million Time 1999-2000 Building type Library Country United Kingdom Southwark Council wanted a building that would contribute to the regeneration of the area. The resulting design was such a success that people were sometimes surprised that it is simply a local library and not something grander. The pre-patinated copper, steel mesh and coloured glass, chosen for their vandal-deterring properties, give the building its sweetie-like appearance. Giant letters on the roof clearly announce its function as a library. The building was Alsop and Störmer’s imaginative response to the original brief, which was: ‘to create a building of architectural merit that will bring prestige to the borough and a welcome psychological boost to the area. It should be a thoroughly modern building that is ahead of its time, but also one that does not alienate people by giving an appearance of elitism, strangeness or exclusivity. Local people must be able to relate to the architecture and design, as well as the services provided and they should feel pride in, affection for and ownership of the building’.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Lord’s Media Centre
Year 1999 Architect Future Systems Actual Cost £5 million Time 1994-1999 Building type Media Centre Country United Kingdom The judges said of the project, ‘The NatWest Media Centre is already a TV personality. It is its own thing, completely unusual and totally uncompromising. It is a breath of architectural fresh air. Perhaps that is why we all got so excited as we walked into the Media Centre. Judges try to put themselves into the position of an eight-year-old when they first see a building, and this was the one, we all agreed, as-eight-year-olds we would have the most fun in. In fact everyone felt ten years younger, seeing the blue. It is a complete one-off: a wacky solution to a singular problem. There is something brilliant about having a dream and seeing it through. Future Systems have been wanting to do this for a long time and they’ve done it. In so many ways this is the building of 1999: an extraordinary iconic structure that has landed in the middle of Lord’s and changed the face of cricket. It is at last in the 20th century – in the nick of time. It may or may not be the future, but it certainly works.’
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
American Air Museum
Year 1998 Architect Foster and Partners Actual Cost £7.5 million Time 1995-1997 Building type Museum Country United Kingdom Foster and Partners created a dramatic setting for the Imperial War Museum’s collection of US combat aircraft. Duxford is a former airbase, used by the US Air Force from 1943 to 1945, so it was an ideal location for the museum. A single exhibition space houses the huge aircraft that make up the collection. Some hang from the ceiling in positions of flight and others are arranged on the ground to enable visitors to view them close up. The building is reminiscent of the cockpit of an aeroplane. It is no static museum and this is reflected in its design. Visitors can watch through glazed facades the take off, flight and landing of many of these historic aircraft, which range from the First World War to the Gulf War of the early 1990s. A permanently grounded Concorde is also on display.
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RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Stuttgart Music School
Year 1997 Architect James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates Actual Cost unknown Time 1992-1997 Building type Educational - School Country Germany The music school was one of a number of new cultural buildings in Stuttgart and completed the sequence of buildings in the urban masterplan conceived for Stuttgart’s ‘Cultural Mile’. Its site is adjacent to the Staatsgalerie, designed by the same architects and completed in 1984, and its shapes and materials complement the earlier building. The school has nine floors with accommodation for students and the public. The chamber music/lecture hall and the 450-seat concert hall and library are found in the main focus of the building – the cylindrical tower on the plaza, which bulges out on either side and registers the presence of the music school on the city’s skyline. The roof terrace provides spectacular views of the city. The entrance to the school is a four-storey foyer, which provides multipleconnections with the rest of the building and acts as the main public vestibule.There is also accommodation for the departments of musical theory, composition, pitch, and practice. The senate room has its own rooftop terrace for receptions and intimate concerts. 17
RIBA Stirling Prize Winners
Centenary Building
Year 1996 Architect Hodder and Partners Actual Cost £3.2 million Time 1994-1994 Building type Educational – University Building Country United Kingdom This showpiece building for the University of Salford houses the design faculty. The university wanted a building that would demonstrate its commitment to technology and design. Internally this building is dynamic; top light washes down one side and is complemented by artificial light. The colouring – cool greys, silver and white – and the asymmetry of the galleries and bridges create patterns and a certain complexity. The result is light and lively. These qualities are reinforced by the architect’s decision to deny some rooms windows, giving them instead fully glazed internal walls. Despite being built quickly and cheaply – the team were on site just 12 weeks after its appointment – the building is a dynamic, modern and sophisticated exercise in steel, glass and concrete. The architects have created a wide studio and lecture theatre space with indirect daylighting. Breaking up the internal street with galleries and bridges, and exposing rooms to this central space gives an air of purpose and animation. 18
© Abiola Noibi 2014