A House for Artists by Apparata Architects wins Neave Brown Award for the UK’s best new affordable housing.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named A House for Artists by Apparata Architects as winner of the Neave Brown Award for Housing 2023. Given in honour of modernist architect and social housing pioneer, Neave Brown (1926-2018), the annual award recognises the UK’s best new affordable housing.
Located in Barking, London, a House for Artists, offers an imaginative response to rising housing costs and a model for community-minded housing design. In exchange for reduced rent, the resident artists use a street-facing exhibition space to deliver free creative programmes for benefit of the local community. The project, which provides homes for 12 families, was co-commissioned by arts organisation Create London and the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, delivered by Be First, and supported by the Mayor of London.
The judges noted how the versatile arrangement of the flats offer opportunities for flexible new forms of shared living. Features such as communal entrance porticos and a street level courtyard, invite households to form social bonds. Generous light-filled living spaces and free studio provision are said to have improved residents’ quality of life, providing them with stability to continue their artistic practice.
Nicholas Lobo Brennan, Director of Apparata architects, said:
“We are delighted that A House For Artists has won because it indicates that there is a genuine appetite for a new approach to housing. At a time when the UK appears poised to address its serious and long-standing housing shortages, we have an incredible opportunity, not merely to put roofs over people’s heads, but to create considered, sustainable and efficient homes that can improve people’s lives.
“Architecture has the power to impact social isolation, community fragmentation, mental health, physical health–so many of the crises afflicting society today. It’s so encouraging that this is now being recognised and understood.”
Chair of the Neave Brown Award for Housing jury, Alice Brownfield, said:
“A House for Artists offers an ingenious architectural response to the pressing challenge of increasingly unaffordable city living, demonstrating what’s possible when communities are put first.
This is a highly courageous project requiring multiple organisations working together creatively – forging new ideas for affordable housing that rethink traditional boundaries between domestic, work and community spaces. Residents told us that the architecture had changed the way they are in the world leaving feelings of isolation behind, and the building’s influence extends far beyond this into the wider community. It is housing that challenges us all and the bravery and dedication of all individuals involved should be celebrated.”
The 2023 Neave Brown for Housing jury was chaired by Alice Brownfield, Director at Peter Barber Architects, Prisca Thielmann, Associate Director at Maccreanor Lavington, and Aaron Brown, son of Neave Brown, Design Director at Smith & Brown Ltd.
The winner of the RIBA Reinvention Award was announced at a ceremony at Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, on 19 October 2023, where the winners for the Stephen Lawrence Prize, the RIBA Reinvention Award, the Client of the Year Award and the Stirling Prize winners were also unveiled.
