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RIBA STIRLING PRIZE SHORTLIST

JUNE 2015

RIBA Stirling Prize Shortlist

Niall McLaughlin Architects are thrilled that Darbishire Place, Whitechapel Peabody Housing has been shortlisted for this year’s Stirling Prize.

Writing about Darbishire Place in a piece written for the Guardian, Olivier Wainwright said ” Filling in the gap of a second world war bomb site, the building follows the sobriety of Darbishire’s designs for “cheap, cleanly, well drained and healthful dwellings for the poor”, but updates it with generous internal spaces and sharply-crafted details that make it as near to a model housing scheme as you could find”.

The RIBA President Stephen Hodder, says: “The shortlisted projects are each surprising new additions to urban locations – hemmed into a hospital car park, in-filling an east London square, completing a school campus. But their stand-out common quality is their exceptionally executed crafted detail.”

The other 5 buildings making this years shortlist are Burntwood School in Wandsworth, designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris; the Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre in Lanarkshire, by Reiach and Hall; the NEO Bankside luxury apartments in Southwark, Rogers Stirk Harbour; the Library and Teaching Building at the University of Greenwich, by Heneghan Peng; and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, by MUMA.

A+U FEATURE ON SOMERVILLE COLLEGE ACCOMMODATION

MAY 2014

a+u Feature on Somerville College Accommodation

The Japanese journal a+u has published an account of the practice’s student accommodation for Somerville College, Oxford. The theme of this month’s publication is ‘New Landscapes of Wooden Architecture’ and features an international selection of projects that explore new aspects of wood technology and its potential within cities. The article gives a description on the themes and processes behind the project, placing it within the context of the historic university city and the surrounding Radcliffe Infirmary Quarter.

It is illustrated with working details of the bespoke timber glazing for the stair tower lanterns, as well as the prefabricated timber projecting bay window units for the student bedrooms, with their integral desk and bench seat overlooking the street.

‘We chose to make the glazed elements in the stair towers and student rooms in wood because we wanted them to be like warm lanterns, internally lit in the evening, bringing light to the narrow street…Wood allowed us to make more three-dimensional details…we owe a debt to Louis Kahn’s work at Philip Exeter Academy Library.’  NM