The RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner has simply been introduced: Appleby Blue Almshouse by Witherford Watson Mann Architects has been topped the most effective constructing of the 12 months. The social housing complicated for over-65s was awarded the UK’s high gong at a devoted ceremony this night, praised for its ‘radical’ and ‘light reimagining of later residing as a collective expertise’.
(Picture credit score: Philip Vile)
Judging the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025
The shortlist this 12 months was particularly wealthy and various – that includes a nationwide icon, personal properties and something in between. Judging the buildings to pick out the winner might need been a problem – but, Ingrid Schroder, who’s director of the Architectural Affiliation (AA) College of Structure and served because the chair of the RIBA Stirling Prize jury this 12 months, highlights that ‘each challenge is valued by itself deserves’.
She provides: ‘We now have an incredible ten-point listing that features problems with sustainability, of response to context, of form of social and public perform, and we weigh all of this up, and I feel what’s actually mirrored within the winner is a way of [its] being an unimaginable place to be.’
(Picture credit score: Philip Vile)
‘To guage the Stirling is a big duty,’ Schroder stresses. ‘It’s calling out the “one thing distinctive” inside the world of structure. After which, after all, as a result of we construct inside a wider society, it has repercussions. It does ship a message.’
Requested what an award like this would possibly sign for structure right this moment, Schroder says, ‘I feel it is much less in regards to the winner than it’s in regards to the spectrum of the shortlist. It’s the variety that’s the most important single sign for structure right this moment, and the capability to suppose throughout a broad set of scales and briefs; to recognise what’s essential, crucial and exemplary inside the world of structure in the meanwhile.’
RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner: Appleby Blue Almshouse
(Picture credit score: Philip Vile)
Appleby Blue Almshouse is located in Bermondsey, south London. The housing growth for over-65-year-olds responds with immense thoughtfulness to the problem of individuals wanting to remain within the metropolis, and neighbourhoods they know and love, as they become old – providing a blueprint for later residing.
The challenge was delivered by United St Saviour’s Charity (which is able to handle the block in perpetuity), Southwark Council and developer JTRE. It was conceived to provide older folks extra decisions by way of retirement residing than merely being ‘pushed or incentivised to town’s edge or the coast’, defined Stephen Witherford, co-founder of Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the observe behind the constructing’s design, once we interviewed him for a narrative because the scheme launched in 2023. Martyn Craddock, CEO of United St Saviour’s added on the identical time: ‘We wished one thing that was undoubtedly not your typical sheltered housing block.’
(Picture credit score: Philip Vile)
Witherford Watson Mann beforehand received the Stirling in 2013, for Astley Fort. The studio was additionally shortlisted in 2023 for the Courtauld Institute of Artwork and in 2019 for Nevill Holt Opera.
RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 shortlist
Alongside the eventual winner, a refreshed nationwide treasure (the house of Large Ben), a medical innovation centre, a Twenty first-century training constructing, and two modern personal properties additionally featured on the shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025.
Elizabeth Tower by Purcell
(Picture credit score: Home of Commons)
Hastings Home by Hugh Unusual Architects
(Picture credit score: Rory Gaylor)
London Faculty of Style by Allies and Morrison
(Picture credit score: Simon Menges)
Niwa Home by Takero Shimazaki Architects
(Picture credit score: Anton Gorlenko)
The Discovery Centre (DISC) by Herzog & de Meuron / BDP
(Picture credit score: Hufton + Crow)
Extra RIBA awards
- United St Saviours Charity received the RIBA Consumer of the 12 months Award 2025 for Appleby Blue Almshouse
- Appleby Blue Almshouse by Witherford Watson Mann Architects received the RIBA Neave Brown Award for Housing 2025
- Sheerness Dockyard Church by Hugh Broughton Architects received the RIBA Reinvention Award 2025
- St Mary’s Walthamstow by Alex Spicer at Matthew Lloyd Architects received the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize 2025
Introduced in the identical ceremony, the 4 aforementioned RIBA awards celebrated totally different architectural expressions and key components which might be essential to the event of the constructed atmosphere.
The RIBA Reinvention Award jury chair and managing director at Marks Barfield Architects, Julia Barfield, stated of the class she headed: ’Fifty-one per cent of RIBA UK award winners this 12 months are for refurbishment or conservation tasks. The Reinvention Award goals to spice up this additional by shining a light-weight on probably the most distinctive and really transformational reinvention tasks as a result of that is the path of journey that our business must go in – lowering waste, reusing supplies and retrofitting – as a substitute of demolishing.’
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