Stirling Prize 2026 Winner News
16 October 2026
This year’s winning project, Lion Green Road, is a Croydon council-commissioned housing scheme in Coulsdon, South London, by Mary Duggan.
RIBA Stirling Prize Shortlist 2026 Winner News
A new suburban ‘living landscape’: South London homes win RIBA Stirling Prize 2026
Photos below © Lorenzo Zandri
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named Lion Green Road, a council-commissioned housing scheme in Coulsdon, South London, by Mary Duggan Architects with RUFFARCHITECTS as the winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026.
Stirling Prize 2026 Winning Building and Architect
Addressing the pressing need for national housing, the suburban scheme delivers 157 dwellings, divided across five blocks, combining privately-owned and socially-rented homes for Croydon Council.
Replacing a former car park on a challenging, sloping site that varies in height by eight metres, the development creates a new connection between the bustling Lion Green Road and a distinctive area of green parkland beyond.
Rather than treating the site’s topography as a constraint, Lion Green Road reconsiders the conventional layout of residential streets and offers a new approach to higher density development. The arrangement uses the site’s changing levels and views to create a new “living landscape” for 635 residents.
Notwithstanding subtle variations in height, each of the five sculpted blocks is built to the same specification. However, each is carefully rotated and positioned to respond to the site’s topography and offer distinct views, with some looking towards the historic monument – the Surrey Iron Railway – a fragment of the world’s first fully independent public railway. The shared design creates a coherent family of buildings that belong within the landscape.
Unified by a palette of brickwork in three subtle shades of brown, the housing blocks blend into the parkland beyond, while small variations in pattern add texture and give each building its own identity.
Arranged around open, shared outdoor spaces, and with access to a new public pathway from Lion Green Road to parkland beyond, the blocks encourage interaction between residents and help foster a strong sense of community.
Inside, every home is dual-aspect, drawing in generous daylight, while private balconies are carefully positioned to avoid directly overlooking neighbouring homes. This thoughtful, carefully considered arrangement allows the buildings to sit closer together while giving residents open views from their own outdoor spaces. The result is density achieved through careful orientation and planning, rather than at the expense of privacy, daylight or views.
The project was designed and built to reduce its environmental impact. By using efficient construction methods, simple finishes, and a more streamlined building process, Lion Green Road was able to cut carbon emissions.
Photos below © RIBA
More than a housing development, the scheme has created a welcoming and inclusive place where people can connect with one another, and with nature. The children’s play areas, sensory trail and residents’ allotments have provided opportunities for recreation, learning, and community activity, bringing residents and neighbours together, while supporting the existing wildlife and biodiversity.
Speaking on behalf of the RIBA Stirling Prize Jury, Chris Williamson, RIBA President, said:
“At a time when we urgently need to deliver more homes, Lion Green Road shows that density can be achieved without compromising the quality of the places we create.
Through a consistent specification, with subtle variation in height and orientation, it offers housing at scale without uniformity.
The architects have created a new kind of garden neighbourhood that balances privacy and generous views with a strong connection to nature – it’s a living landscape.
This is thoughtful, resourceful architecture that proves that even the most challenging of sites can be transformed into truly distinctive places for people to call home.”
Mary Duggan, Director, Mary Duggan Architects, on behalf of Mary Duggan Architects, RUFFARCHITECTS and the London Borough of Croydon, said:
“We believe the significance of Lion Green Road lies in what it says about the future of housing: that architectural ambition, social value and generosity can co-exist within the realities of contemporary development.
The project transforms a challenging suburban site into 157 homes woven through a mature, accessible landscape, using topography, shared space and carefully calibrated thresholds to support a rich culture of dwelling. Its transformative values are not expressed through spectacle, but through the everyday experience of living in a secure, generous environment – supporting privacy and encounter, independence and belonging, and the multiple patterns of contemporary domestic life.”
Theo Angelopoulos, VP AEC Design Strategy, Autodesk, said: “The Stirling Prize celebrates architecture at its very best, spotlighting ambitious design that responds to the needs of people and places. As the prize marks its 30th anniversary, Autodesk is proud to continue supporting RIBA in recognizing the creativity and innovation shaping the built environment, and to celebrate this year’s winning project.”
The winner was announced at a ceremony on 15 October at Old Billingsgate, London.
RIBA International Prize 2026
The ceremony also included the announcement of the RIBA International Prize 2026.
Green Field Factory of Karupannya Rangpur Limited by Nakshabid Architects was celebrated by RIBA President, Chris Williamson as a “thoughtful design [that] dismantles traditional hierarchies to create profound social and environmental change”. The seven-storey rug factory in Rangpur, Bangladesh offers an alternative model for factory design, challenging traditional workplace environments whilst creating new opportunities for its predominantly female workforce.
RIBA Special Awards
The following schemes also received RIBA Special Awards celebrating clients, conservation, housing, reinvention and the work of early career architects.
Winning schemes as follows:
- York Minster by Tonkin Liu Architects – RIBA Client of the Year Award 2026 for Heritage Quad and Technology Hub, both of which comprise the York Minster Centre of Excellence
- The Buttermarket by Architectural Thread – RIBA Conservation Award 2026
- Rowan Court by Satish Jassal Architects – RIBA Neave Brown Award for Housing 2026
- Oru Sutton by Samuel Chisholm Studio and Takero Shimazaki Architects – RIBA Reinvention Award 2026
- The Buttermarket by Architectural Thread – RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize 2026
RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 Shortlist
The shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 comprised:
- A house at Fairmead, High Beach, Epping Forest by Sergison Bates
- BEAM, Hertfordshire, by Bennetts Associates
- Paddington Square by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Paris) in collaboration with Adamson Associates (London)
- Pembroke, Mill Lane by Haworth Tompkins
- River Wing, Clare College by Witherford Watson Mann Architects
RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 Jury
The Stirling Prize Jury 2026 comprised:
- Chris Williamson (Chair), RIBA President
- Stephanie Macdonald OBE RA, Director, 6a architects
- Tracy Meller, Senior Director, RSHP
- Dr. Julie Godefroy, Head of Net Zero Policy, CIBSE (Sustainability)
- Will Gompertz, Director, Sir John Soane’s Museum
- Catherine Winfield, VP Product & Experience, Autodesk
Lion Green Road, Coulsdon, Croydon, London, UK
RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 Jury Citation
Lion Green Road sits within Coulsdon in the London Borough of Croydon, positioned between contrasting residential contexts and shaped by a challenging, topographically complex site. The development delivers 157 dwellings with an equal mix of affordable and private homes, and exceeds the original brief in terms of the number of units achieved.
The site fronts onto Lion Green Road, with low-rise green belt housing set on higher ground to the south and traditional suburban streets to the north. Its dramatic 8m level changes and position within a geological basin demanded an inventive design response from the architects. Additional constraints included the need to maintain access to the housing and open land to the rear, and the requirement to protect a neighbouring scheduled monument associated with the historic Surrey Iron Railway.
These conditions informed a scheme composed of five pavilion buildings arranged across a publicly accessible, free flowing ground plane. Brickwork in three subtle shades of brown is the primary building material. This provides variation across the faceted façades, with a unifying projecting brick detail adding texture and marking storey heights. The pavilions rise between four and seven storeys, with shifts in height and massing carefully calibrated to respond to both the site’s steep topography and key views towards the scheduled monument.
The plan type of the pavilions has all the apartments arranged in a pin-wheel pattern around a central core, ensuring every home is dual aspect and enjoys generous daylight. Balconies are oriented to avoid direct overlooking, allowing the pavilions to be placed closer together while still maintaining long views from the private spaces. A richly planted, biodiverse landscape weaves the site together and plays a central role in the project’s identity.
The landscape strategy accommodates significant level changes while creating a variety of shared spaces, from children’s play areas to seating zones and dedicated growing spaces. Public pathways thread through the planting, inviting community use and enhancing permeability. The jury commended the project for its inventive and site-specific response to a highly constrained site. They praised how the landscape led pavilion arrangement delivers meaningful public benefit while offering high quality amenity for residents and supporting a strong sense of community.
A short film, featuring the winner:
Lion Green Road Housing in Coulsdon on YouTube
Stirling Prize 2026 winning building + architects images / information received 161026 from the RIBA
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