Now in its 15th year, the annual RIBA House of the Year award (formerly the Manser Medal) is awarded to the best new house designed by an architect in the UK.
It’s a sign of the times that this year’s seven nominees are being progressively unveiled in a special four-part TV series, Grand Designs: RIBA House of the Year that begins 4 November on Channel 4. Spoiler alert ahead, but the first two nominees are the Flint House and the Sussex House projects.
The first, designed by Skene Catling De La Pena in Buckinghamshire as part of an artists commune, literally rises out of a seam of flint geology, its flint clad masonry creating a silhouette that the architects say ’gives both a feeling of varying geological strata with the building dissolving as it reaches to the sky.’
The second nominee is Sussex House. Wilkinson King Architects’ contemporary villa takes full advantage of its bucolic setting in the Sussex countryside - its open plan, muted colour palette, high ceilings and strategically placed windows flood the internal spaces with light to create a mood the architects describe as ’a quiet monastic cloister.’
More nominee announcements to follow and the winner will be crowned on-screen on 25 November. As they say, stay tuned.
