Cambridge university library wins Riba Stirling Prize

For the second year in a row, the Riba Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, has gone to a university building.

The New Library at Magdalene College in Cambridge draws on different influences from the last half a millennium, including tall Tudor-style chimneys, in a project by Níall McLaughlin that has won over the judges of this year’s award, announced on Thursday.

It follows last year’s victory for Grafton Architects, creators of Kingston university’s Townhouse, another library and multipurpose academic building.

It is also the second consecutive year it has been won by Irish architects, although McLaughlin has been based in London throughout his career.

The New Library replaces a neighbouring library gifted to the college by 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys. Designed to last for 400 years, with quality materials and natural ventilation, the design was a popular choice for first prize.

Built in load-bearing brick and timber, its gabled roofs recall earlier structures in the college and around Cambridge, though the material palette echoes the decidedly modern British Library in London. With a double-height, top-lit central space alongside corner nooks and window seats readers have both public or private areas to occupy.

The library was picked from a shortlist of largely unshowy projects. A school and housing block in London’s Hackney by Henley Halebrown is a solid and urbane building in sandstone red with a real civic presence.

Another contender, by Hopkins Architects, is a transformation of 100 Liverpool Street in London, an existing office building, which takes a more sustainable approach to commercial architecture.

Only one other building on the list of finalists, apart from the winner, is outside London, the Forth Valley college in Falkirk, by Reiach and Hall.

This year’s shortlist indicates the difficulties inherent in comparing disparate building types and in understanding what the architecture prize stands for in today’s society.

The relatively understated shortlists of the past few years have clearly illustrated the changes in British architecture, a step away from the big cultural blockbusters of the early 2000s, recipients of lottery funding, and towards smaller and more locally engaged projects.

The winning entry illustrates the current tilt towards sustainability. Built of brick and timber it eschews concrete, which has rather fallen out of fashion owing to its carbon footprint. Its look might be a little Tudor but it is resolutely modern.