Cambridge housing development wins top architecture prize » Housing » 24dash.com

A "post-Thatcherite" contemporary housing development has won one of Britain's most prestigious architecture awards.

The development, called Accordia, designed to foster a feeling of community, won the 2008 Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) Stirling Prize at a glittering awards ceremony in Liverpool last night.

Built of German brick, the traditional terrace homes and flats are on a brownfield site in the city of Cambridge.

There is common land in the development, designed to give children a safe place to play outside their homes, a place where cars are "tamed not banned".

The panel of judges was impressed by the houses' and flats' good-sized, well-proportioned rooms with views ranging from urban to rural pasture.

Judges for the Stirling Prize, made in association with The Architects' Journal, described it as "housing for the 21st century, a post-Thatcherite development that is not afraid of communal aspirations and aesthetics".

They commented: "This is high density housing at its very best, demonstrating that volume house-builders can deliver high-quality architecture - and that as a result they can improve their own bottom line.

"The whole scheme is about relationships: between architect and developer/contractor/client; between three very different firms of architects - Feilden Clegg Bradley, Maccreanor Lavington and Alison Brooks Architects - and between private and public external spaces, providing a new model for outside-inside life with interior rooftop spaces, internal courtyards and large semi-public community gardens."

Accordia has already won numerous awards: Housing Design Awards - overall winner (2006); Building for Life Awards: Gold Standard (2006); National Homebuilder Design Awards (2006); and Civic Trust (2007).

"It is a project that will be much referred to and used as a future case study. It is architecture which gives hope for us all for the future," added the judges.

Riba president Sunand Prasad announced the award winners, who get a £20,000 cheque.
Accordia beat stiff competition from five other contenders: Amsterdam Bijlmer Arena Station, Netherlands; Manchester Civil Justice Centre; Nord Park Cable Railway, Innsbruck, Austria; Royal Festival Hall, London; and Westminster Academy at the Naim Dangoor Centre, London.

The following winners of the Riba Special Awards were also announced and presented.
They were:

• Oxley Woods, in Milton Keynes, won the Manser Medal sponsored by the Rooflight Company for the best one-off house or housing scheme designed by an architect in the UK.
• The Sackler Crossing in Kew, by David Sheppard Architects, won the Stephen Lawrence Prize sponsored by the Marco Goldschmied Foundation, for the best example of a building with a construction budget of less than £1 million.
• The Old Market Square, Nottingham, by Gustafson Porter, won the inaugural Riba Cabe Public Space Award which celebrates publicly accessible external space.
• St Pancras International, by Alastair Lansley (for Union Railways), won The Crown Estate Conservation Award. The prize is awarded to the best work of conservation which demonstrates successful restoration or adaptation of an architecturally significant building.
• The Manchester Civil Justice Centre, Manchester, by Denton Corker Marshall, won the Riba Sustainability Award sponsored by English Partnerships. The prize is given to the building that demonstrates most elegantly and durably the principles of sustainable architecture.
• Westminster Academy at the Naim Dangoor Centre by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris won the Sorrell Foundation Schools Award, was presented to the architects of the best Riba award-winning school - primary or secondary - with the aim of raising the standards of design in all new school building.