The 2024 RIBA Special Awards winners have been announced covering the Stephen Lawrence Prize, Reinvention Award, Neave Brown Award for Housing and Client of the Year.
Wraxall Yard by Clementine Blakemore Architects as the winner of the 2024 Stephen Lawrence Prize.
Image: Lorenzo Zandri
Founded by Baroness Doreen Lawrence OBE and the Marco Goldschmied Foundation, the annual Prize was established in 1998 in memory of Stephen Lawrence, a teenager and aspiring architect who was the victim of a fatal racist attack in 1993.
With a focus on encouraging and nurturing new talent, the award exclusively recognises projects led by an early career project architect. This is typically someone who has qualified within five years prior to the project’s completion date.
Wraxall Yard sensitively restores and converts the ruins of an old dairy farm into a highly accessible holiday lets with an educational smallholding and community space.
Born out of Wraxall Yard Director Nick Read’s personal experience with inaccessible holiday accommodation for wheelchair users and sub-standard retrofits that didn’t centre the experiences of disabled persons, he partnered with architect Clementine Blakemore to create this beautifully-crafted, accommodating destination that offers visitors comfort and independence.
RIBA has named Shakespeare North Trust and Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council as 2024 RIBA Client of the Year winners for their ambitious community regeneration project Shakespeare North in Prescot.
Image: Infinite 3DAimed at inspiring a community, transforming opportunity, raising educational aspiration and attainment, and playing a part in regenerating the local area, Shakespeare North is the product of an ambitious vision and extraordinary brief from an exceptional client team.
Built on a former council-owned car park, the new theatre building is promoting learning, experimentation, and reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s works. Offering an exhibition space, outdoor performance area, seminar rooms, and the only known purpose-built indoor Elizabethan theatre, the architects and clients have created a cultural and social space that has inspired and invigorated an historic Merseyside town.
The client’s dedication to social purpose and local investment throughout the project was praised by judges, with an emphasis on creating partnerships with local merchants and collaborations with independent businesses.
RIBA has announced Croft 3 on the Isle of Mull, Scotland by fardaa as the winner of the 2024 RIBA Reinvention Award.
The Award recognises buildings that have been creatively reused to improve their environmental, social, or economic sustainability. It shines a light on 'retrofitting’ – increasing the longevity and energy efficiency of existing buildings and reducing the need for demolition and new construction.
Image: David BarbourThe brief was to create a restaurant space that retained the intimate and simple character of a croft building while maximising the opportunity for customers to enjoy the awe-inspiring landscape and views across to the Isle of Ulva and Atlantic Ocean. Meeting the National Scenic Area’s expectations for design quality and a clear social benefit, Croft 3 transforms a once dilapidated ruin into a truly unique, intimate community space.
RIBA has named Chowdhury Walk by Al-Jawad Pike as winner of the 2024 Neave Brown Award for Housing.
Given in honour of modernist architect and social housing pioneer, Neave Brown (1926-2018), the annual award recognises the UK’s best new affordable housing.
Named in memory of the late Dr Abdul Chowdhury who campaigned for additional PPE for frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic, Chowdhury Walk is part of an ambitious programme of new generation council housing by Hackney Council.
Image: Rory GardinerBuilt on a plot previously occupied by garages and ad-hoc parking, the development has created 11 new two, three and four bedroom dwellings, seven of which are for social rent.
The houses are uniquely staggered, moving away from the UK’s traditional linear terrace house arrangement. This not only gives the development a distinctive sculptural quality but provides residents with added privacy and supports passive solar gain.
Chowdhury Walk offers a blueprint for social housing – an elegant piece of high-quality urban placemaking that generously serves both its residents and passers-by.
