Three college homes, of them commissioned through Oxford, will cross face to face with Damien Hirst’s artwork gallery, a arguable property regeneration challenge and a stealthy concrete residence worth of a Welsh Bond villain, withinside the conflict to win the RIBA Stirling prize for the UK’s fine new constructing.
The contenders from the metropolis of dreaming spires could not be greater different, from the outdoor at least. One is the glowing glass wedding ceremony cake of the Blavatnik School of Government, through Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron, a slick beacon of true governance with a whiff of oligarch bling – possibly in homage to its funder, Len Blavatnik.
The different is the Weston Library, a remodeling of Giles Gilbert Scott’s Forties New Bodleian Library through Wilkinson Eyre, who’ve scooped out the congested innards of the vintage hulk and inserted a mild and ethereal global of recent ee-e book stacks and analyzing rooms at the back of the hard masonry walls.
While their wrappers is probably different, the interiors have a lot in common, sharing the modern-day default language of blond wood, quite a few glazing and huge significant collecting areas of incredibly unsure use.
The 0.33 college challenge is a global away, set at the banks of the Clyde, offering clever pinstripe houses for the colleges of nautical research and constructing, engineering and power of the City of Glasgow College, along side a 200-room corridor of house. Designed through Michael Laird and Reiach and Hall Architects, it would appear unremarkable in the starting glance, however it is one of the few recent tasks withinside the metropolis that absolutely recognizes the river, the usage of the homes to border good-looking new civic areas.
The area in among homes is simply as vital to Trafalgar Place, a improvement of 235 houses through dRMM Architects, the primary finished section of the Heygate Estate regeneration in Elephant and Castle. It’s questionable whether or not the broader transformation of a public housing property right into a non-public enclave have to be celebrated, however the architects have achieved a exceptional process of crafting some thing this is starting to sense like a actual place, with nicely-scaled streets and areas and facades of polychromatic brickwork.
A comparable sensitivity to the sequencing of areas is located in an immaculate new house on the brink of Wales, designed through Penarth-primarily based totally exercise Loyn & Co for a retired artist couple – the primary non-public residence to grace the Stirling shortlist for 15 years. Featuring luscious expanses of uncovered concrete, this bunker-like living is cleverly submerged into its hillside site, with residing and running regions organized round top-lit courtyards.
It has an interest to element and fabric end simplest matched through Caruso St John’s Newport Street Gallery in Vauxhall, for Damien Hirst. Housed in a chain of Victorian surroundings portray workshops, joined through a brand new brick extension with a saw-enamel roof, it’s miles a version of becoming a member of vintage and new, and functions of London’s maximum stunning staircases.
Tasked with the perennial ordeal of evaluating apples and oranges, this yr the judges’ mission is as tough as ever. Remembering that the prize is especially for the constructing that has made “the most important contribution to the evolution of architecture”, Herzog and de Meuron’s virtuoso stack of glass cylinders have to take the gong – even though the judges is probably deterred through the reality that the Swiss maestros will nearly clearly win it for his or her Tate Modern extension subsequent yr.
The complete shortlist
Squaring up in opposition to the sober classical portico of Oxford University Press throughout the road, the Blavatnik School can appear to be brassy arrival to the metropolis of honey-colored stone. But the longer you look, the greater cautiously judged it seems to be. Stepping returned from the street, its proportions rhyme with its neighbours, the wafer-skinny concrete slabs hover among sensitive glass leaves, at the same time as its spiralling indoors is one of the maximum uplifting areas constructed in Oxford in a century.
Dressed in a curtain wall of gold anodised aluminium, composed with a clever Miesian air, those exceptional towers body a (alas gated) square, growing a brand new area at the river Clyde, fringed with a public colonnade alongside the riverside. As nicely as the standard coaching areas, a seven-tale grand corridor brings a experience of status, at the same time as a exciting simulation suite transports you to the bridge of a field deliver chugging alongside the Hudson.
