The Neave Brown Award recognises the best new example of affordable housing in the UK.
Date: 09 August 2019
Two developments by practices led by alumni or tutors at The Cass have been shortlisted for the first Neave Brown Award for Housing announced by The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
Mae Architects, whose founding director Alex Ely co-leads Unit 5 on the March RIBA Part 2 course with Michael Dillon (also an architect at Mae), are included for their Brentord Lock West Keelson Gardens project. Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley are shortlisted for their work on Goldsmith Street. Annalie Riches, who has taught on the RIBA Part 2 and Part 3 courses at The Cass established the practice with partner David Mikhail while Cathy Hawley is a former tutor and current external examiner at the school. Both projects were viable candidates having already been recipients of RIBA Regional Awards.
The award was commissioned in honour of Neave Brown, a socially-motivated, modernist architect best known for designing a series of celebrated London housing estates who passed away in January 2018.
Brentford Lock West Keelson Gardens by Mae Architects for Client Waterside Places, which won the RIBA London Award in 2019, is a thoughtful canalside development comprising six large apartment buildings, with distinctive saw-tooth roofs reflecting the site's industrial past, linked with rows of four storey townhouses.
Goldsmith Street by Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley for Client Norwich City is a large development of 105 highly energy-efficient homes for social rent, designed to Passivhaus standards for Norwich City Council. In addition to the RIBA East Award 2019, the Goldsmith Street project is shorlitsed for the RIBA Stirling Prize 2019, and has won both the RIBA East Client of the Year 2019 for Norwich City Council and the RIBA East Sustainability Award 2019.
Projects viable to be shortlisted for the Neave Brown Award had to have been recipients of a Regional Award and also to be developments of ten or more homes, with one third of the housing affordable, and demonstrating evidence of meeting the challenge of housing affordability. The other projects in the shortlist are Colville Estate designed by Karakusevic Carson Architects and David Chipperfield Architects and Eddington Lot 1 in Cambridge, by WilkinsonEyre with Mole Architects. The winner of the award will be announced at the RIBA Stirling Prize ceremony on Tuesday 8th October 2019.
Image: Brentford Lock West Keelson Gardens by Mae Architects. Photography by Tim Crocker
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