UK’s Best New Building

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RIBA has named Appleby Blue Almshouse, a social housing complex for over-65s, as the Stirling Prize Winner 2025. The majority of the finalists not only featured lots of glass, most were residential and thus featured windows and doors.

The Royal Institute of British Architects has presented its most prestigious annual award since 1996.

The winner of the 2025 outing is by Witherford Watson Mann Architects which replace an abandoned care home with something quite stunning.

 

Appleby Blue

Appleby Blue radically reimagines the traditional almshouse, flipping the centuries-old typology by placing shared spaces at its heart to foster community and reduce isolation among residents. The development contains 59 bright, spacious flats arranged in a U-shape around a central garden courtyard.

Inside, generous homes with discreet accessibility features offer an aspirational living environment, standing in stark contrast to the institutional atmosphere often associated with older people’s housing.

 

Windows & light

Large kitchen windows draw in natural daylight and provide residents with uninterrupted views of the garden courtyard. A variety of plants, trees and a gentle water feature, that echoes throughout the building, gives a sense of a woodland oasis, allowing residents a constant connection to a green space in the heart of London.

Light-flooded, terracotta paved hallways connect the flats and contain customisable planters and benches, forming a ‘social corridor’ that encourage spontaneous interaction among residents.

Cleverly designed automated vents alongside the double-glazed windows allow the corridors to collect heat in the winter to create a warm winter-garden for residents and release heat to stay cooler in the summer. Above, a generous roof terrace provides a colourful, transportive communal space for residents, where the planting beds have been raised to accommodate accessibility needs.

 

Bay windows

At street level, floor-to-ceiling bay windows create a strong social connection between residents and the surrounding community. A direct view of the bus stop on the main street allows for chance interactions and residents to observe the daily bustle of city life.

A varied public calendar of events also helps draw people inside to the warm, timber-clad shared spaces. The generous double-height public garden room and community kitchen provide spaces for everyone to come together and socialise, offering residents a form of co-living centred around communal spaces.

 

 

Transformation

Remarkable collaboration and meticulous attention to detail between Witherford Watson Mann Architects and the client, United St Saviour’s Charity, has created a serene, social and profoundly transformational environment for the users of Appleby Blue, where the importance of the resident's mental and physical wellbeing are each treated with equal significance and priority. The result is a pioneering model for designing high-quality housing for later living, where care and dignity are embedded into the design throughout.

Speaking on behalf of the RIBA Stirling Prize Jury, Ingrid Schroder, Director of The Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture, said: “Designing social housing for later life is too often reduced to a simple provision of service. Appleby Blue, however, is a provision of pure delight. Its architects have crafted high-quality spaces that are generous and thoughtful, blending function and community to create environments that truly care for their residents.

“This project is a clarion call for a new form of housing at a pivotal moment. Built against the backdrop of two crises, an acute housing shortage and a growing loneliness epidemic among older people, Appleby Blue offers a hopeful and imaginative response, where residents and the surrounding community are brought together through the transformative nature of the design.

The winner was announced at a ceremony on 16 October at London’s Roundhouse.

 

Picture: Appleby Blue Almshouse has won the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 for architecture.

www.riba.org/explore/awards/uk-awards/stirling-prize

Article written by Cathryn Ellis
24th October 2025

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