The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) today announced the winners of this year’s National Awards, which recognize the best new buildings built in the United Kingdom. The forty-six winning buildings, sixteen of which are in London, range from an art gallery expansion to an inner-city school restoration to an Oxford library by the firm of the late Zaha Hadid.
According to RIBA President Jane Duncan, this year’s selections intended to focus on smaller-scale (“but no less ambitious”) projects like the restoration of Wilton Music Hall in London, while also focusing on architecture with a civic and social focus. To that end, there are a number of schools and hospitals included among this year’s winners, including Banbridge Health and Care Centre in Northern Ireland, an integrated medical facility with an open-air courtyard and a turf-covered roof, and Greenwich Housing, a 60-unit complex of “clean, simple, and elegant” low-rent housing in the Greenwich neighborhood of London.
There was also a large showing of galleries and cultural spaces on the list, including Marks Barfield Architects’s Greenwich Gateway Pavilion, a multi-volume shopping center and community space next to London’s O2 Arena. Also chosen was Jullian Harrap Architects’s “highly sensitive” transformation of the Sir John Soane Museum in London, which was featured in RECORD last year.