The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the 30 winners of the 2023 RIBA National Awards for Architecture, providing an insight into the country’s architecture, design, and social trends. Among the key themes observed this year, the need to rebuild communities and to find sustainable ways of practicing stand out as the main concerns of the participant architects. The response to these themes is varied, ranging from buildings that aim to offer opportunities for collaboration for students to creating stimulating social spaces for the elderly or providing creative programs at a neighborhood scale. All the projects selected have been in use for at least one year and have provided data regarding their environmental performance. Examples of sustainable design include both new buildings, following the Passivhaus certification, and renovation of existing structures.
The RIBA Awards, inaugurated in 1966, aim to set the standard for good architecture across the UK. The awards are for buildings, regardless of their size, budget, or location, designed by RIBA charted architects and international fellows. After the RIBA Regional Awards and National Awards, the RIBA Sterling Prize shortlist will be selected from the winners of the RIBA National Awards.
Each project looks, in its own way, to address both its client brief and the wider role architecture can play in serving society. Among the winners are a number of projects that offer a model for an architecture that is more widely responsible. These buildings intelligently illustrate the potential of well-designed spaces to bring people together and, ultimately, architecture’s power to change our world for the better. - RIBA President, Simon Allford
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RIBA Announces 2023 London Awards WinnersThe winners are as follows, along with descriptions provided by RIBA:
A House for Artists / Apparata Architects (Barking, London)
Flexible live/work space for 12 artists. In exchange for reduced rent, they deliver free creative programs for the neighborhood through a street-facing, glass-walled community hall, and outdoor exhibition space.
Agar Grove Phase 1b / Mæ (Camden, London)
Model of low-energy, Passivhaus social housing. This project seeks to reduce operating costs while creating dynamic apartments appropriate for family living. 57 new homes are arranged in three blocks around a paved courtyard, providing communal amenities, play, and gardening space.
Blackbird / Nicholas Lyons of _and-lyons-architects with Hamish Herford (Gloucestershire)
New pavilion home and lake in the Cotswolds. A low, dark oversailing roof and charred wood cladding belie the sense of awe and light that awaits inside this home designed for a couple in which to enjoy gardening and artistic pursuits.
Bloqs / 5th Studio (Enfield, London)
Slick and bright redevelopment of an industrial shed into a buzzing social enterprise, including workshops for individuals working in design and manufacturing.
Brick House / Howells Architects (Birmingham, West Midlands)
Bold and ambitious development of 37 mews houses, centered around a communal garden and historic canal.
Central Somers Town Community Facilities and Housing / Adam Khan Architects (Camden, London)
Part of a larger masterplan this project includes a flexible community children’s facility, adventure playground and several housing units for social rent.
Courtauld Connects - The Courtauld Institute of Art / Witherford Watson Mann Architects (London)
Part of a multi-phase project that aims to open up the institution both physically and culturally. This phase includes the reworking of the entrance, a beautiful new stair down to basement visitor facilities, and re-leveling and opening up the 18th-century vaults.
Cuddymoss / Ann Nisbet Studio (Ayrshire, Scotland)
New home built inside and around a 200-year-old ruined building, previously used to house people and cattle. A simple timber-clad second building connects to the ruin by a glazed link and provides additional space bringing the building gently back to life as a beautiful home.
Edith Neville Primary School / Hayhurst & Co Architects (Camden, London)
At the core of Camden’s first phase of regeneration for the Somers Town estate, this school replaced a previously dilapidated building. The new building and boundary have been thoughtfully designed to extend the surrounding parkland landscape.
Great Things Lie Ahead, 2020, Holborn House / 6a architects (Holborn, London)
Refurbishment and extension of a gym to provide a new, more visible, and accessible community building. The old basement has been stripped back to its concrete structure and opened to the sky, with new roof lights over a multipurpose hall and a two-storey street-facing extension providing a new entrance and function spaces.
Hanover / Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands (Mayfair, London)
A complex of five mixed-use buildings and generous public spaces above the new Elizabeth Line Bond Street station entrance. The project involved the restoration and conservation of a series of historic facades along New Bond Street, retained and providing new office space behind.
Hill House / McGonigle McGrath (County Down, Northern Ireland)
Located on the gently sloping southern side of the Lagan Valley, this highly accomplished and beautifully crafted new family home relates strongly to its external landscape and topography.
Hundred Acre Wood / Denizen Works (Argyll and Bute, Scotland)
Set within a stunning landscape overlooking Loch Awe, this new build family home is clad in recycled TV screens and features a central hall space designed to accommodate an 18-ft Christmas tree. Architect and client conversations focused on the history of Scottish architecture and inspiration was drawn from the sculptural works of Eduardo Chillida, which evoke the sense of a carved solid mass.
Hushh House / Elliott Architects (North Yorkshire)
Bespoke new homes arranged as a series of interlinked composed spaces that are separated by small courtyards. The building sits in the former grounds of an existing larger property and develops the previous walled tennis court.
John Morden Centre / Mæ (Greenwich, London)
Day center for a later-living residential charity. The timber and brick building includes a medical center, café, lounges, and offices. A meandering timber ‘spine’ forms an enclosed forest-like walkway stitching together a series of brick ‘pavilions,’ expertly combining recreational and more tricky medical facilities without feeling institutional.
Laidlaw Music Centre by University of St Andrews / Flanagan Lawrence (Fife, Scotland)
This is a considerate and well-composed addition to the city’s ancient center, complementing its listed neighbors. Alongside the suite of rehearsal and practice spaces contained within the building, the main performance space incorporates two world firsts for a chamber hall: a fully mechanized floor beneath it and a reverberation chamber above.
Lavender Hill Courtyard Housing / Sergison Bates architects (Clapham, London)
Tucked away down a timber-lined passageway, barely visible at the end of a Clapham mews, Lavender Hill Courtyard has redeveloped a former sheet-metal workshop into nine apartments, arranged around a courtyard space and a timber-decked terrace on the first floor.
Lea Bridge Library Pavilion / Studio Weave (Waltham Forest, London)
Built at the rear of a charming Edwardian red-brick public library, this relatively modest multi-function extension sensitively complements the existing building, bringing very useful additional space to an important community facility and new life to a charming but neglected historic garden.
Manchester Jewish Museum / Citizens Design Bureau (Greater Manchester)
This new museum, clad in perforated Corten steel, comprises a gallery space, archive, learning space, and visitor amenities adjoining a fully renovated Grade II*-listed former synagogue. Standing on the busy Cheetham Hill road in the heart of Manchester, it both serves and celebrates the local Jewish community.
Middle Avenue / Rural Office (Farnham, Surrey)
Set on a corner plot in the conservation areas of a garden suburb this adaptable home pays homage to the local architecture and the design principles of the Arts and Crafts movement. Throughout the house, inside and out, great care has gone into the detailing and craftsmanship.
Pen y Common / Nidus Architects and Rural Office (Hay-on-Wye, Wales)
Sympathetic extension to a traditional 17th-century Welsh longhouse. ‘Thinking local’ has driven the project, with timber and stone and skills sourced from the close vicinity.
Radley College Chapel Extension / Purcell Architecture Limited (Purcell, Oxford)
Contemporary extension and refurbishment of a listed chapel to increase capacity. The approach creates a new sanctuary and small ‘apses’ and improves the chapel’s acoustics.
Rhossili House / Maich Swift Architects (Rhossili, Wales)
New family house on an exposed clifftop. From the outside, the two-storey, pitched-roof, white-rendered composition is a familiar coastal motif. Internally, the clever positioning of windows of various proportions offers moments of difference and intrigue.
Saltmarsh House / Niall McLaughlin Architects (Isle of Wight)
Conceived as a delicate steel-frame pavilion, this new home takes reference from the repeating pitched-roofed glasshouses that once graced the kitchen gardens of the Grade II-listed Victorian house, in the grounds of which the project sits.
Spruce House and Studio / ao-ft (Walthamstow, London)
New home and design studio constructed from cross-laminated timber (CLT) on an infill site. The façade is reimagined as a shopfront, with the ground floor fully glazed behind slatted timber shuttering. This distinctive design feature continues into the interior with a series of slatted privacy screens offering glimpses through the house to the garden beyond.
Swing Bridge / Tonkin Liu (Crystal Palace Park, London)
This elegant bridge provides secure access to a world-renowned collection of life-size dinosaur sculptures. The laser-cut structure references the iconography of a bony fish, negating the need for gates and fences.
Taylor & Chatto Courts and Wilmott Court by Frampton Park Estate / Henley Halebrown (Hackney, London)
Taylor and Chatto Courts accommodate 16 social-rent and four shared-ownership homes in three 5-storey ‘villas’, whilst Wilmott Court’s ‘palazzo’ plan creates a new urban block with 15 shared-ownership and 10 private-tenure homes.
The Fireworks Factory at Woolwich Works / Bennetts Associates (London)
Flexible arts venue within a large Grade II listed building complex within the historic Woolwich Arsenal. The historic building has been stripped back with new interventions and upgrading to support a wide range of arts-based functions including performance spaces, dance studios, artists’ workshops, cafés and rental spaces.
The Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre / Carmody Groarke (London)
Repurposing the Grade II-listed theatre in order to stage a new, immersive production of the musical Cabaret. Carmody Groarke have created a faux Weimar 1920s ambiance. Transforming the normal front-door arrival sequence, taking visitors past actors’ changing rooms and a number of bars, the project sets the scene even before the curtain is lifted.
University of Warwick - Faculty of Arts / Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (West Midlands)
The impressive new building brings together the departments and schools of the arts faculty under a single roof for the first time. The new building draws inspiration from the site’s parkland context. Four pavilion buildings are connected by a feature staircase, inspired by the structure of a tree, that organically grows through the central atrium space, each branch helping to demarcate various communal spaces to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration. At the base of the stair, it splays to form an amphitheater that activates the ground floor and addresses the main entrance.
