Goldsmith Street Wins RIBA’s 2019 Stirling Prize and Inaugural Neave Brown Award for Housing

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named Goldsmith Street, designed by London-based firm Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley, as the winner of both the 2019 Stirling Prize and the inaugural Neave Brown Award for Housing. The awards recognize the best new building in the U.K. and the best new housing development in the U.K., respectively. Spanning seven blocks in Norwich, England, Goldsmith Street is a social housing project that provides almost 100 low-energy individual houses and apartments that meet Passivehaus standards.

Goldsmith Street was selected from a shortlist of six projects to receive the Stirling Award. RIBA president Alan Jones called Goldsmith Street a “beacon of hope,” in a RIBA press release announcing the prize. “It is commended not just as a transformative social housing scheme and eco-development, but a pioneering exemplar for other local authorities to follow.”

The jury for the 2019 Stirling Prize comprised chair Julia Barfield of Marks Barfield Architects; RIBA President Alan Jones; Michael Jones of Foster + Partners, the firm behind the 2018 Stirling Prize-winning Bloomberg European headquarters; lay assessor Kathy Gee; and Zac Monro, principal at Zac Monro Architects. Architect Gary Clark served as the jury’s sustainability advisor.

For the Neave Brown Award, Goldsmith Street was selected from a four-project shortlist released in July. Jury chair and former RIBA president Ben Derbyshire called the project “an exemplar for social housing,” in a RIBA press release.

The jury for the inaugural Neave Brown Award for Housing comprised chairs Ben Derbyshire and Jo McCafferty, director at London-based Levitt Bernstein, and Adrian Gale, professor at the University of Plymouth School of Architecture in Plymouth, England.