Is this year's Stirling Prize winner a worthy victor?

Before we kind of press on any further, we probably should just take a moment to explain what the Sterling Prize actually is.

Yeah, the Sterling Prize is an annual prize that celebrates the best new buildings in the UK, hosted by RIBA.

Yeah, it's the culmination of RIBA's annual awards programme, where people enter regional awards, they win the regional awards, they go through to national awards, then it gets to a shortlist of six, and then out of those six, one is chosen, and that is kind of the best building of the year.

And in this case, it is a housing scheme in Croydon.

It's not the first time a housing scheme has won, but it is kind of unusual for housing to win.

Housing also won it last year, which is a bit unusual.

Housing back on the agenda

for

architects.

And maybe just, Amy, give us a quick kind of explanation.

Obviously, for people who don't know the project, obviously it's on our website.

I imagine by now there's probably photos of it everywhere.

But just talk us through the project.

Yeah, so the housing is basically 157 homes within five blocks in a site in Croydon.

And each of the five blocks kind of have this pinwheel shape plan, which has been designed to give each flat a dual aspect.

So by pinwheel, you mean kind of, if you're looking at it from the top, star shapes.

Is that what we're...

Kind of, but it's also like kind of zigzags in and out a bit, like kind of an irregular star shape.

Nice.

So kind of, yeah, irregular star shape, five blocks.

I think they were like five to seven stories and they're kind of arranged in a slopey hillside park.

Is that about right?

Yeah, and they have brick facades.

They're like two different coloured bricks.

So there's like a darker grey brick and then a reddy kind of brick.