This is the first time that Stanton Williams has won or been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious architecture prize, awarded to the architects of the best new European building built or designed in the UK.
Set within the University of Cambridge Botanic Gardens the low rise, collonaded stone and glass building has been designed to complement its Grade II listed garden setting. The judges said that the architects have created an exceptionally stimulating work environment, reinterpreting the tradition of the monastic cloister and collegiate court to create spaces for reflection, debate and collaboration amongst scientists. Next to the laboratory spaces, the architects have designed a stylish new public garden café.
‘The Sainsbury Laboratory is a timeless piece of architecture, sitting within a highly sensitive site, one overlooking the woods where Darwin walked with his tutor and mentor Henslow, discussing the origin of species,’ the judges explained.
‘In this project Stanton Williams and their landscape architects have created a new landscape, a courtyard which flows out into the botanical gardens. The project is both highly particular and specialised, and at the same time a universal building type, taken to an extraordinary degree of sophistication and beauty.
‘The project seems simple, and this hides the fact that it was a hugely difficult building to achieve. It needed to provide flexibility for future changes in scientific practice, and it has achieved this brilliantly. The building had to balance openness with stringent requirements for security, which was done by placing the laboratories on the first floor, together with their own meeting places,’ they pointed out.
‘The building uses fine materials expertly detailed; and beautifully integrates works of art commissioned from Susanna Herron, William Pye and Norman Ackroyd. The project’s profound sustainability is impressive, not only in terms of its excellent energy performance but also in terms of its long term flexibility and adaptability,’ they added.
RIBA president Angela Brady described it as an exceptional building that, adding that it is testament to the skill, experience and imagination of Stanton Williams architects that they have found a creative solution to this complex project.
The winners of the RIBA Lubetkin Prize for the best international building and three special awards were also announced. The Guangzhou International Finance Centre in China by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, the tallest building in the world by a UK architect, won the RIBA Lubetkin Prize for the most outstanding work of international architecture outside the European Union by a member of the RIBA.
Maison L, a highly innovative house on the outskirts of Paris, by architectures possibles won the RIBA Manser Medal for the best newly designed private house and Kings Grove, an new house in south east London by Duggan Morris Architects won the RIBA’s 2012 Stephen Lawrence Prize.
The Olympic Delivery Authority and LOCOG won the 2012 RIBA Client of the Year supported by the Bloxham Trust. The award recognizes the role good clients play in the delivery of fine architecture.
