The Royal Institute of British Architects has named six finalists for the 2019 Stirling Prize, one of the United Kingdom’s most highly regarded architectural honors.
The Macallan Distillery and Visitor Experience in Speyside, Northeast Scotland, is a new distillery and visitor center designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Gillespies that puts the manufacturing process on display while also responding to, and enhancing, the landscape. A rolling green roof integrates the structure with the hills of the surrounding Scottish countryside. “It’s supposed to be a mystery revealed, a Jules Verne–like interior,” senior partner Graham Stirk told RECORD last year.
RIBA also shortlisted the redesigned London Bridge Station by Grimshaw, which has already won two local and one national RIBA award this year. Grimshaw removed the existing brick arches to make room for more passengers, bringing in natural light and reusing the bricks elsewhere in the project. The train station, which has improved transportation across much of England, remained functional throughout the time of its construction.
Other finalists include Cork House, by Matthew Barnett Howland in partnership with the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, a carbon-negative building with structural cork walls and roof; Goldsmith Street, by Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley, a dense but light-filled stretch of more than a hundred houses set within an old residential neighborhood; Nevill Holt Opera by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, an intimate auditorium with an unassuming exterior; and the Weston at Yorkshire Sculpture Park by Feilden Fowles Architects, a building set on a former mill quarry, with indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces that complement the surrounding countryside. All projects on the shortlist won RIBA regional awards this year.
Foster + Partners’ Bloomberg Headquarters in London won last year’s Stirling Prize. RIBA will announce the 2019 winner in a ceremony on October 8 in Camden, London.