RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner is ‘a radical reimagining of later living’

The RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner has just been announced: Appleby Blue Almshouse by Witherford Watson Mann Architects has been crowned the best building of the year. The social housing complex for over-65s was awarded the UK's top gong at a dedicated ceremony this evening, praised for its 'radical' and 'gentle reimagining of later living as a collective experience'.

Judging the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025

The shortlist this year was especially rich and varied – featuring a national icon, private homes and anything in between. Judging the buildings to select the winner might have been a challenge – yet, Ingrid Schroder, who is director of the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture and served as the chair of the RIBA Stirling Prize jury this year, highlights that 'every project is valued on its own merits'.

She adds: 'We have an amazing ten-point list that includes issues of sustainability, of response to context, of kind of social and public function, and we weigh all of this up, and I think what's really reflected in the winner is a sense of [its] being an incredible place to be.'

'To judge the Stirling is a huge responsibility,' Schroder stresses. 'It is calling out the "something exceptional" within the world of architecture. And then, of course, because we build within a wider society, it has repercussions. It does send a message.'

Asked what an award like this might signal for architecture today, Schroder says, 'I think it's less about the winner than it is about the spectrum of the shortlist. It is the diversity that is the most significant single signal for architecture today, and the capacity to think across a broad set of scales and briefs; to recognise what is important, critical and exemplary within the world of architecture at the moment.'

RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner: Appleby Blue Almshouse

Appleby Blue Almshouse is situated in Bermondsey, south London. The housing development for over-65-year-olds responds with immense thoughtfulness to the challenge of people wanting to stay in the city, and neighbourhoods they know and love, as they get older – offering a blueprint for later living.

The project was delivered by United St Saviour’s Charity (which will manage the block in perpetuity), Southwark Council and developer JTRE. It was conceived to give older people more choices in terms of retirement living than simply being 'pushed or incentivised to the city’s edge or the coast', explained Stephen Witherford, co-founder of Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the practice behind the building’s design, when we interviewed him for a story as the scheme launched in 2023. Martyn Craddock, CEO of United St Saviour’s added at the same time: 'We wanted something that was definitely not your typical sheltered housing block.'

Witherford Watson Mann previously won the Stirling in 2013, for Astley Castle. The studio was also shortlisted in 2023 for the Courtauld Institute of Art and in 2019 for Nevill Holt Opera.

RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 shortlist

Alongside the eventual winner, a refreshed national treasure (the home of Big Ben), a medical innovation centre, a 21st-century education building, and two innovative private homes also featured on the shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025.

Elizabeth Tower by Purcell

Hastings House by Hugh Strange Architects

London College of Fashion by Allies and Morrison

Niwa House by Takero Shimazaki Architects

The Discovery Centre (DISC) by Herzog & de Meuron / BDP

More RIBA awards

• United St Saviours Charity won the RIBA Client of the Year Award 2025 for Appleby Blue Almshouse
• Appleby Blue Almshouse by Witherford Watson Mann Architects won the RIBA Neave Brown Award for Housing 2025
• Sheerness Dockyard Church by Hugh Broughton Architects won the RIBA Reinvention Award 2025
• St Mary’s Walthamstow by Alex Spicer at Matthew Lloyd Architects won the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize 2025

Announced in the same ceremony, the four aforementioned RIBA awards celebrated different architectural expressions and key elements that are important to the development of the built environment.

The RIBA Reinvention Award jury chair and managing director at Marks Barfield Architects, Julia Barfield, said of the category she headed: 'Fifty-one per cent of RIBA UK award winners this year are for refurbishment or conservation projects. The Reinvention Award aims to boost this further by shining a light on the most exceptional and truly transformational reinvention projects because this is the direction of travel that our industry needs to go in – reducing waste, reusing materials and retrofitting – instead of demolishing.'

riba.org