The winners of the 2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing and Stephen Lawrence Prize are Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road by Henley Halebrown and The Hackney School of Food by Surman Weston.

Buildings.

Photograph by Nick Kane

Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road by Henley Halebrown has been named the recipient of the 2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing 2022 by the Royal Institute of British Architects. The award, given in honour of the late social housing pioneer Neave Brown, recognises the UK’s new best affordable housing. 

The project, located on busy Kingsland Road in Hackney, combines a school with 68 rental apartments on a tight urban site. The development is owned by an affordable housing charity and half of the housing is offered at below market rate.

“This is a highly-intelligent response to providing critical social infrastructure – a thoughtful and generous set of spaces for residents and the local community to live, learn and play in,” said RIBA president Simon Allford. “The educational and residential elements are elegantly engaged in a single composition – an architectural essay in designing an important city corner that engages with the public realm.” 

This year’s jury for the Neave Brown Award for Housing was chaired by former winner Kaye Stout of Pollard Thomas Edwards, Yemi Aladerun, architect and Development Manager at Meridian Water and Neave Brown family representative Professor David Porter.    

“This is a notable architectural response, demonstrating how to effectively combine multiple functions without diminishing the strength of either the educational or residential aspect. Here, Henley Halebrown deliver high-quality affordable housing that stimulates and delights residents, visitors and passers-by. The robust design is thoughtfully detailed throughout,” said Stout.

“Not only does it provide social value to this inner-city neighbourhood, it responds to a complex brief with architectural ambition and sets an extremely high standard for urban design. When Neave Brown accepted the RIBA Gold Medal, he said  ‘… we weren’t so much doing housing, as making part of the city’, and this project does just that.” 

Buildings.

Photograph by Jim Stephenson

Hackney School of Food by Surman Weston was awarded the Stephen Lawrence Prize 2022, an award for new architectural talent and projects completed on a budget of under £1 million. The annual prize was set up in 1998 in memory of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. 

The retrofit project saw a formerly derelict school keeper’s house converted into a new farm-to-table teaching space and garden that shows children how to grow, cook and eat produce. 

This year the Stephen Lawrence Prize was judged by Matthew Goldschmied, the co-trustee of the Marco Goldschmied Foundation, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, Doreen Lawrence OBE; and Mike Tonkin of Tonkin Liu, the winner of the 2021 Stephen Lawrence Prize.  

The success of the Hackney School of Food is not limited to this one site. The architect and client have developed an inspirational blueprint to teach others how to regenerate and enliven their own communities in a similar way,” said Goldschmied. “This bold and inventive investment exemplifies the power of architecture to transform not only the building it touches, but the community it serves.” 

The winners were chosen from a shortlist of three for the Neave Brown Award for Housing, which included Lovedon Fields by John Pardey Architects and Kiln Place by Peter Barber Architects, and Leeds Footbridge by Gagarin Studio, Leyton House by McMahon Architecture, Peveril Gardens and Studios by Sanchez Benton Architects, Ravine House by Chiles Evans + Care Architects, Surbiton Springs by Surman Weston and The Parchment Works by Will Gamble Architects for the Stephen Lawrence Prize 2022.

The winners were announced alongside this year’s Stirling Prize winner at a ceremony at the RIBA headquarters at 66 Portland Place on Thursday 13 October 2022.

Last year the recipient of the Stirling Prize was Kingston University London – Town House by Grafton Architects, while in 20219 the prize went to Goldsmith Street by Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley.