buildings shortlisted for the 2021 riba stirling prize — and reveals which was crowned the winner at an awards ceremony hosted in coventry cathedral back in october. there is a phrase that has become rather familiar over the last year or so. "build back better." it is an idea that says, if you are going to build something, if you have got to solve today's problems, be really careful that you're not going to be creating tomorrow's disasters. and that is why we have come to this place — a british mosque in cambridge, one of six buildings nominated for this year's stirling prize. this is a little moment to sit back and admire beauty. a chance to look around the six nominated buildings for this year's stirling prize — at the end, we will find out who has won the prize for britain's best new building. but this is about more than just a beauty. it is about solutions to problems such as, how do we continue to build without destroying the environment? how can we future—proof construction? and the most fundamental question of all — why build in the first place? a question that takes us to ourfirst nominated building. kingston university in london wanted a new library and a place for its dance studios, but the town house is more than that. it is a way of creating openness, collaboration, togetherness and pride. wow, like, this is incredible. like, coming here and being like, if i walk past with people from home, like, i go to uni there and they are like, that is where you study? and i am like, yeah, it's so cool! the first day i walked in here was actually very unique. i did not imagine this would be a university at all. it's polished, new, it didn't give me the vibe of a traditional university you see on tv shows. hearing it is mostly dedicated to dance and performing arts, amazing to hear about, because they are normally seen as an afterthought for universities. dance and performing arts are not seen as a career path. kingston, like many new universities, grew from an amalgamation of older colleges and institutions. a hodgepodge mixture of buildings in different locations — few of them had much wow factor. the town house is meant to be a statement, a public face. it has given the university, for the first time, a front door. it is open to the public. these staircases, they are social spaces leading up to the whispering gallery, the library has been mixed in with the dance studios across there. everything servicing a central overriding thought — bringing people together. there is a little bar and cafe over there. it is such an open and bright space. there is so many more studios, meaning the whole curriculum has changed, ourtimetable, we can have so many more classes going on at the same time. it is lots of space, it is really uplifting when you come in, there is lots of natural light and everybody has a smile on their face when they come in the building. it is very exciting. go for latin. and after a year of learning by zoom, it has made everybody cherish a key part of the university experience. for the last year or so, dance using zoom, does it work? well, it proved that it is possible. it was an experience, but... but being back here, i'm guessing it's better? 100%! i think everyone can attest that dance is meant to be, it is a social dance, you know, it is a social artform and i think it is meant to be in the space, live, bumping into people, connecting with people, having conversations like this. now onto our next building, and, like here — the mosque — it is all about fitting in with the local environment, but this time, the problem is not the residential neighbourhood, but the fact that it is somewhere really, really beautiful. the key issue is, don't spoil the view. the brief of the building was to create a world—class building in which to house the internationally significant boat collection. it needs to be a building that can accommodate large scale boats, that was exciting for the public to want to visit, but also, importantly, because it's sat in one of our great national parks, it had to lack enhance landscape it was within. sustainability has been really central to the concept of the building. we have systems such as the heat pump that heats the museum underpinning the energy strategy. we have selected wherever possible local materials so that the travel from source to site is as short as possible. the building has a zero—waste strategy so all of the domestic waste water is treated on—site and it is filtered through the landscape and weed beds so it can then be discharged back into the lake as clean water. the site isjust amazing. it reflects boat building, it reflects restoration, conservation. some of the success of what the team has achieved here is a building that is simultaneously foreground and background. the foreground's the visitor experience, a building that is here. and yet it is the background, the backdrop to a beautiful landscape setting, and immersing yourself in a fantastic collection. so, windermere, all about water, and our next building is equally elemental. a study in stone. with all the attendant stresses, strains and personal trauma. was there a moment when you thought you wish you had never started this? of course. if somebody decided to press a button, it could all be demolished. we are looking at an apartment building of eight flats and office space underneath for three offices and it is made of limestone, load—bearing limestone. correct. limestone. that is what this building is all about. rediscovering a way of building that doesn't involve the energy—hungry furnaces and kilns needed for steel, concrete and bricks. what's keeping this upright are giant blocks of rock, the only energy required is cutting and moving them into place. it is a means of construction that has rather fallen out of fashion. sedimentary rock and, depending on how old it is, you will still find fossils within it. and here you can see... this has come straight out of the ground, hasn't it? precisely. so here is an ammonite shell, and what you find is you can still do it, it is actually cheaper, faster and far greener still to just simply put stone buildings up. so, we found here that we saved 92% of the embodied carbon had this been a steel frame building and clad in stone. so, very simply, you just cut the stone out of the quarry, transport it and erect it on site. and that is it. so, essentially you have created a very high—tech building but has the appearance of a ruin. i guess so, yeah. and inside, it is equally natural. so this is your flat we're coming into? exactly, yeah. so straight in. that is some view. got st pauls out there and we can see the stone. that is right, that is the one. 0ur limestone exoskeleton. so on the outside it is all stone, inside? all european oak. timber. is that to make it carbon neutral? carbon negative? exactly, so if you remove all the partitions, all the plasterboard lining, all the paint, replace it with timberframe and timber as the finish, then any wet areas, more stone. normal minimalist architect's kitchen here, isn't it? yes, that's right. we can even hide the oven if we don't want to look at it. 0r nice big larders hiding the mess, which is also a bit of a secret door — a short cut to our bedroom. oh, it is a door? it is a doorway. come and follow me. wow. wow! takes us past our bathroom. is this a bath? that is a nice, big bath. the building is meant to evoke memories of an old stone—built nunnery that once stood here, but it does stand out a bit when compared with its brick—built neighbours. one member of the local preservation society described it as an alien blob. and the council wanted it demolished. the long, legal battle to keep the wrecking ball away has been won. but it has left its scars. was there a moment when you thought you wish you had never started this? of course. sorry, you want me to elaborate, obviously. yes, you have moments of doubt. obviously it would have been far easier to do nothing, not attempt to investigate, experiment, innovate, as it were. this really could have been a pile of rubble. i am told by councillors, other councillors and all the legal team involved that it wouldn't have done, but as far as i can tell, if we hadn't fought the appeal, the demolition would have had to be enacted by somebody, even if it wasn't by us. and your feelings now? it is difficult because if you spend two and a half years fighting even after you have won, you are relieved, but that two and a half years of stress structures you in a way, so it is difficult. our next building is all about a topic that has been very much at the heart of life over the last 12 months or so. key workers. millions of us went out and did our applause on the doorsteps, but that doesn't put a roof over people's heads, does it? we have created a place that has a real sense of community and where the residents can feel they belong to. i'm a director at the architects for the key worker housing at eddington, cambridge. the project consists of ten buildings containing 264 apartment buildings. the focus was on creating spaces between the buildings rather than the buildings. we created a network of interconnected courtyards. a sequence of spaces of varying character and size responding to the social functions, starting from the public space of the market square through to the much more community focused landscape course. so, the buildings are arranged, they are arranged as friendly spaces, the positioning undercuts that, and we intended to create a sense of intimacy and a sense of a discovery. this project is key for the housing for the university of cambridge�*s staff and researchers. eddington is a mixture of developments. we have accommodation housing, retail, community centre, school, hotel. the university was set out to develop as an extension of the city of cambridge and give an opportunity for all staff and students to come and live and be part of the success story of the university of cambridge. the development is one of the largest water recycling schemes in the world. all water on the roof is stored and collected and then carried through into the continuation point within the communal landscape court. to achieve the high demands for the daylight means that buildings become quite far apart. the building form is quite simple, one of the challenges was really, for us, to create an intimacy and sense of place. eddington overall is a fabulous concept and i am always bowled over by the fact the university's undertaking this project. the units are well spaced, well thought out, love the design, love the feel of it, it's actually quite a bit of a luxury to come here every day. when i visited a few months ago during the summer, i saw that the people inhabiting these spaces, picnics, the children's toys were on the ground, there must�*ve been a sense of security there and people really inhabiting the spaces. that was the main focus for this project, but also that is what it gives this project focus in terms of meaning. all of these buildings have a degree of drama about them, but one in particular is all about heritage, history and myth, and the issue is, how do you build something and not spoil the magic? when we proposed it to english heritage, i never thought they would accept, but sometimes the crazy ideas are actually the best ideas. my name is william matthews, and along with my colleagues from ney & partners, we were the engineers and designers of the tintagel castle footbridge. the footbridge reconnects the two sides of a medieval castle built in the 12th century, mainland ward and island ward where connected by rock which has since eroded away and the bridge recreates that link between the two sides. one of the key drivers behind the project was to improve accessibility to the site. one of the major problems at tintagel is this incredibly rocky landscape. we wanted to be able to get lots of people here who could not get here before, because there were so many steps up to the island, a lot of people could not because they had bad knees, used wheelchairs or whatever it was. now we have essentially step—free access right from the car park all the way through onto the site, and it was so satisfying on the opening day to see literally a queue of wheelchair users from the local village queueing up to be the first person to cross the bridge and onto the island, something that they might not have done for many years. something that they might not have in my mind, this was a textbook example of how you should design a major piece of engineering in a really sensitive heritage site. we can look at lots of designs for bridges that would actually have to go through the archaeology on the surface of the island. the elegance of this solution is it is anchored into the rock on either side below the sensitive archaeology, very clever. the materials we used were important not just structurally, but also how it will tie into the landscape, the situation. for the bridge deck we have used mined slate, mined from the quarry just two miles away. 40,000 hand—split and hand—cut slates have been laid on edge like after eight mints. one word that encapsulates the building is, it is not a very architectural word, but it is fun and the kind of project you can see so easily on the faces of users, and the enjoyment they are getting from the project and that is extremely gratifying. and now ourfinal building. 0ur mosque in cambridge. when i first walked in, i think you first enter up the stairs through the car park and you see the sweeping pillars, it is breathtaking, to be honest. the puzzle here was to try to create something that created a sense of awe, spirituality, but didn't dominate this cambridge street. so set back behind the greenery, the building slowly reveals itself as you walk towards it. the inspiration? a wooded grove. garden paradise. everything around us is wood, then? yes. a low carbon building, then? exactly, one of the central tenant of the design was that we should sign something that was both environmentally sustainable and socially sustainable. socially sustainable? yes, the involvement of the community was very important too, that the building should sit comfortably in its community, so this was a competition in 2009 and members of the community, non—muslim members, were invited to be part of the process of choosing the architect. so they were involved from the early stages. but this isn'tjust about sustainability. it is also a place designed to be welcoming to women. one of the things working here you see is that the people coming through the day other than to pray are women and children. a poll was put out to ask women, how much would you like there to be a separation, if any at all? so the barriers offer different heights, some are from hip to toe, one is at waste level, and one section where there is no barrier at all. even when women come now, they often come to the office and ask, or if they are uncomfortable, they say, where is the women's section? because they are used to going around the back, upstairs, but the fact that women can come through the main entrance as well with men, they have their own prayer hall and disabled toilets and baby changing facilities, everything is brought out for men and women, and that is so liberating, just to come to a space that is open and accessible. the beauty of cambridge mosque there for you. we have seen six buildings, but there is one question left. who has won? we need to go to an awards ceremony. and so to coventry cathedral, the uk's city of culture and the chair of this year's jewelry? one of the giants of global architecture, lord foster. we wanted everybody to be a winner, but, finally, after hours, hours of agonising discussion, we concluded as a team that the winner was about the future, it was about younger generations, first—generation students, and that of course leads us to the town house by grafton architects. applause kingston town house, a building with a purpose, to make university life open, accessible, collaborative, social, receiving the award. and we have to win out with us now. gerard from grafton architects, congratulations, must be a good feeling? astonishing, we are delighted we won this prize. particularly for the university because this is something that is so important, that we speak about what university education is about. one of the extraordinary things is the client as much as anything, because they had this strange vision about inviting in the public, getting the library and dance studios together, trying to create a sort of social hub will. a sort of social hub? exactly, they were looking for a showpiece building and that meant not that it was to show off the building, but revealed what was happening in the building to passers—by outside. do you think this is about changing the way a university education might be? many students are not from a university background, their parents did not go, they are often first—generation. it is quite inviting. absolutely and people must feel at home no matter... that is what struck us about the university, it is so culturally diverse and we must think about integrating so many people in different ways so they feel comfortable. if it is about gender or race or about culture or religion, they all feel they should belong. it is like a little world, really, a complete little world. so you can find people who are like you who can speak to you in this building. thank you very much indeed, congratulations. the winner of this year's riba stirling prize is kingston town house, grafton architects, and talking to them, they said one measure would be looking at how many chance encounters, casual conversations, smiles, how much laughter was in the building, and a building that is a celebration of togetherness. it feels a fitting winner of this year's riba stirling building of the year. with that, thank you. hello, there, and a very merry christmas to you. we have seen a band of rain and hill snow working its way northwards across the country to end christmas day and into the early hours of boxing day. most of the rain and hill snow will become confined to the north of the country, certainly across scotland through the day, and then we will see something a bit brighter with some showers following in across the south. this weather front has continued to journey northwards. as it bumped into the cold air which has been sitting across the north and east of the country, that is where we had the rain turn to snow initially, across the hills of north wales, north midlands and also northern ireland, but very much so across the pennines and in towards central and southern scotland, some drifting with strong wind as we head through the course of boxing day morning. into the afternoon, the rain and hill snow becomes confined to the hills of scotland. something a bit drier in the south, a legacy of cloud, mind you. some brightness for northern ireland, wales and the south—west. winds light here but still strong and gusty further north, close to the weather front. again, another cold day across northern areas, particularly with any lying snow over the hills. again something much milder in the south and south—west. as we move out of boxing day, that weather front to the north begins to fizzle out, taking the rain and hill snow when it. elsewhere, lots of dry weather, lighter winds, clear spells, a recipe for mist and fog. further south, into the south—west, a new weather front working its way in. milder, wetter and windy weather arriving here. a cold night to come across the north. here it is, the new area of low pressure, a weather front swiping the south—west and the south of the country as we move through the day. most of the impact will be felt across france but we will still have enough wind and rain for it to be noticeable. initially, south wales and south—west england, pushing into the midlands and across to the south—east through the day. turning mild and windy with it. further north, not a bad day, particularly across scotland and northern england. it will be chilly but bright with plenty of sunshine. temperatures are struggling to get much above six or seven. again, double figures across the south. the mild air really wins out as we move through the new week and in the run—up to new year. it could turn very mild for a time with winds coming up from the south or south—west. but low pressure will always be nearby and in fact, it will be quite wet and windy at times. it could become balmy for a while across southern areas, even into the first part of january. this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. queen elizabeth speaks about her memories of prince philip in herfirst christmas day message since his death. that mischievous, inquiring twinkle was as bright at the end as when i first set eyes on him. police have arrested a man armed with an offensive weapon in the grounds of windsor castle — where the queen is spending christmas. the pope uses his christmas message to highlight the tragedies in yemen and syria, which he says are being passed over in silence. and lift off. the world's most powerful telescope is launched into space to offer unprecedented images of the universe. and — after three months of spewing lava and ash,

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