An inspiring collection of 12 projects make up this year’s MacEwen Award shortlist, ranging from a floating events venue to a woodland retreat centred around a repurposed military parachute, but all embodying the concept of architecture for the common good
It’s a great pleasure to unveil the shortlist for the MacEwen Award 2025, a collection of 12 effective, ambitious and frankly heartwarming projects. All make powerful contributions to the common good, sometimes in unexpected ways, always in admirable ones, and they’re gratifyingly scattered across the country, and across sectors.
Below you’ll find a floating platform on Belfast’s River Lagan; a woodland retreat (with demountable parachute) in Bexley; a uniquely accessible Cambridge college; fresh approaches to dementia care in Caldicot; a vibrant (and colourful) community special school in Alfreton; an ingenious and economical platform-cum-civic space in Blackpool; Halifax’s ‘shot in the arm’ bus station; an astute (and eye-catching) classroom block for deaf children in St Albans; a progressive activity centre (with geodesic domes) near Edgbaston; a gratifyingly popular library extension in Islington; the theatrical revitalisation of a neogothic church in Bangor; and another theatrical revitalisation, this time of modernist community rooms in Kensington.
You could just click on the occasional link here and there, but you’d lose the opportunity to discover each of these projects, and be surprised, impressed and heartened, just as our jurors were. Congratulations to all the practices involved. The winner and commended projects will be revealed online on 27 and 28 January, and featured in our February issue, also published at the end of the month. We’re looking forward to it.
Alfreton Park Community Special School, Derbyshire
Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture for Derbyshire County Council
Alfreton Park is a community special school for pupils ranging from 3 to 19 years old, offering specialist teaching in a safe, supportive environment. Its new single-storey home, designed by Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture, follows a natural ridge in the tree-lined site, with a barn-like appearance appropriate to its agricultural setting – the pitched roofs create light, open spaces within.
The plan accommodates a diversity of activities, from trampolining to physiotherapy, in state-of-the-art teaching facilities. Wide, accessible corridors offer views into classrooms and include breakout spaces, with colour acting as a wayfinding device. Deep overhangs give the classrooms sheltered outdoor spaces while parkland views connect with nature. Green zinc cladding reflects the surroundings, with matching hard-wearing terracotta tiles facing onto outdoor teaching areas. The adjoining community centre has deep red cladding to clearly signal its location.
Client and community meetings were held throughout the design process, as well as consultations with pupils, staff and parents. The result is an adaptable, resilient design, with the community wing acting as dining hall and sports space by day, and hub for residents and local groups by night.
Headteacher Josie O’Donnell notes the reduction in bad behaviour and the improvement in communication and happiness among pupils. One of them, Ryan Jones, comments simply: ‘This school changed my life.’
Birmingham Settlement Nature and Wellbeing Centre, Birmingham
Axis Design Architects for Birmingham Settlement
The Nature and Wellbeing Centre is a safe and sociable hub, which offers wellbeing and outdoor activities for local communities in a densely populated and diverse inner-city area. The site was a dormant playing field until 2018 when it was adopted by Birmingham Settlement, a charity that tackles social disadvantage by creating opportunity.
Designed in collaboration with Axis Design Architects, Phase 1 opened up the space for regular activities and provided sheltered spaces and facilities in the colourful Red Shed community café. The building is constructed primarily of clay blocks, timber and cellulose insulation, creating a new form of low-carbon masonry wall build-up. This is combined with airtight construction, mechanical ventilation and ground-source heat pumps with boreholes sufficient for future phases. Its bold form creates a striking visual impact, which can be seen beyond the site boundary.
Phase 2, completed in 2024, added geodesic domes to promote horticulture and biodiversity education, a rainwater harvesting pond, an amphitheatre for performing arts, lighting, bike charging points and public access from the nearby Edgbaston Reservoir. An orchard was also established with spaces for overnight urban camping, a children’s natural play area, community grow plots, hotbed composting bays and initiatives to build awareness about climate change and natural resource depletion.
Over the summer, the site hosted the second Neighbourhood Futures Festival, attracting over 1,500 visitors and collaborating with more than 30 community partners to offer four days of learning, fun and creativity. The project has created a unique and revitalised community asset, which promotes a more socially and ecologically positive future.
DRIFT, Belfast
OGU Architects + MMAS + Matilde Meireles for Belfast 2024 (Belfast City Council)
Commissioned for the Belfast 2024 cultural festival, DRIFT floated at two neglected stretches of the River Lagan during August and September, provoking curiosity about the waterway and its cultural history – often perceived in utilitarian terms – and highlighting possible interconnections with the city. Constructed entirely of scaffolding and reusable or biodegradable materials, the structure was designed for adaptability. It was first installed at Stranmillis Weir in south Belfast, then partially disassembled, towed downstream and rapidly rebuilt in the city centre in a different form. At both locations, the Lagan intersects with human-made processes, allowing visitors to engage with the complex exchanges that result.
DRIFT acted as a public space for visitors during the day while also hosting events delving into the river environment, from plant workshops and concerts to bat detection and stargazing. In addition, sonic artist Matilde Meireles created a series of works exploring the multisensory nature of the two sites, harnessing phenomena usually excluded from human perception – such as underwater life, atmospheric phenomena and electromagnetic interference – to convey the interdependencies between ecosystems and urban life.
Both a transient artwork and a strategic project, DRIFT acted as an instrument to generate meaningful and potentially transformative citywide conversations about the relationship between the city and the river, providing a reservoir of knowledge about the feasibility of creating a series of new public spaces.
Significant challenges were overcome, requiring co-operation between public, private and third-sector organisations and the creation of a new company. But for a few days, people could step out onto the Lagan, explore these untended waterside areas, and enjoy a multisensory experience usually reserved for rowers alone.
Halifax Bus Station, Yorkshire
Stephen George & Partners for West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Calderdale Council
The comprehensive redevelopment of Halifax Bus Station provides a shot in the arm for the Yorkshire town, encouraging the shift to public transport by residents and visitors, and supporting economic life. On a difficult, sloping site, architect Stephen George & Partners and engineer Aecom have delivered a building that works intelligently with the terrain to provide an intuitive, enjoyable experience for 15,000 daily passengers.
Social value informed several of the project’s central aims. Sustainability measures include a green roof that attenuates rainwater run-off as well as softening the visual impact of the new building. Distribution of weight in the roof helped to reduce the amount of steel required overall. Heat pumps and photovoltaics also contributed to a reduction in embodied carbon of 11,700 kgCO2e and annual operational carbon savings of 3,416 kgCO2e.
The reworked facility also incorporates three heritage buildings on the edges of the site: a former chapel, a school and a Sunday school. These have all been lightly refurbished and adapted to provide useful ancillary accommodation and a second entrance to the bus station.
Accessibility was a key concern and informed both large and small-scale design decisions, from the broad concourse with a Y-shaped plan that traverses the gradient of the site to clear directional signage. Centralised passenger facilities include a Changing Places toilet for use by disabled people. All users benefit from a design that prioritises safety, allowing easy surveillance of the site and removing risky conflicts between pedestrian and bus routes.
Heathlands School Classroom Building, St Albans
Manalo & White with Richard Lyndon Design for Heathlands School
This innovative two-storey classroom block at Heathlands, the UK’s largest sign-language school for deaf children, was co-designed by Manalo & White and deaf-architect-led practice Richard Lyndon Design to create a supportive, stimulating learning environment shaped around the needs of pupils who have all too often had to adapt to existing and unsuitable buildings.
Its striking green facade, given texture by timber battens of varying widths, enlivens a previously underused corner of the campus, now freshly landscaped. For those signing as they walk, wide balconies and generous liminal areas provide the necessary space while the bold yellow of door frames and windows attracts attention in peripheral vision. The absence of corridors aids both conversation and navigability as well as ensuring that the best use is made of the site’s footprint.
The block’s six classrooms have access to outdoor teaching areas, which offer a calm space to recover from the fatigue associated with extended periods of lip and sign-reading. A horseshoe desk arrangement allows pupils to sign both to one another and to the teacher, while soft blue and green surfaces contrast effectively with a variety of skin tones, enhancing communication while contributing to a tranquil atmosphere.
Students were closely involved throughout the design process, resulting in a building that responds to their lived experiences and possesses the vibrancy and playfulness they requested, while meeting all their needs. Heathlands is expanding to meet growing demand, and this valuable first step to transforming its campus will help students feel valued, supported and welcomed.
Kensal House Community Rooms, North Kensington, London
Studio Sam Causer for SPID Theatre
The thoughtful refurbishment of Kensal House Community Rooms, designed in 1936 by Edwin Maxwell Fry and Elizabeth Denby, has revived the social heart of the surrounding housing estate and ensured it is accessible to all.
In 2005, youth theatre charity SPID (Social Progressive Interconnected Direct) was invited to occupy the derelict Community Rooms and run theatre workshops to help integrate residents and foster a strong sense of community. The space was cold, suffered regular flooding from leaks above and was riddled with ad-hoc services and modern alterations. Furthermore, it was no longer easily accessible to pushchairs and wheelchair users, following the replacement of a sloping path with a car park in the 1960s.
After the theatre raised nearly £4 million of public money, work could finally begin to conserve the historic features of the Grade II*-listed centre and ensure it was fit for modern use. Studio Sam Causer resurrected the original layout, reinstated lost glazing and openings and integrated discreet modern services and facilities. A new lift, staircase and level-access ramped corridor have also been installed.
SPID reopened the Community Rooms in autumn 2024, and now delivers a free programme of workshops where people can develop passions for heritage and progress, learn new skills from each other and advocate for positive social change. The Community Rooms were intended to be a place for residents to be together, to learn from, support and enjoy each other. At last, after decades of neglect, they are once again fulfilling this aspiration.
Lea Bridge Library Pavilion and Garden, London
Studio Weave for London Borough of Waltham Forest
This extension to a local authority library in east London delivers a place for it to breathe, holdingh engaging events with the community and also space to hire out. There is also, of course, the obligatory café.
The linear pavilion runs along one edge of the site, creating an L-shape with the new wing looking onto mature trees and new edible planting with an emphasis on resilient plants that can cope with both climate change and misuse by visitors.
The library can now host a range of activities for locals, both young and old, in a downbeat local area that is also seeing significant growth with new housing developments. It now hosts 150 events a month and has seen a four-fold increase in visitors.
The volume responds to the mature trees on site, while bringing in light and air through tall opening vents and rooflights which also add an extra dimension to the lighting. Light through the full-height glazing is mediated by the colonnade.
Inside low-grade timber slices are pieced together to create a scalloped timber lining – a strong reference to the LVL of the structure and the trees beyond it but above all providing an attractive feeling of warmth.
This project extends the life of the library and elevates the tiny park it sits alongside, which in turn, elevates the whole interior, offering a peaceful green view. In the densely populated Lea Bridge. This is a welcome gathering space that opens up possibilities for those who live here.
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
R H Partnership Architects for Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge
With its new buildings for Lucy Cavendish College – the most diverse college in Cambridge, and the first to admit over 90 per cent of students from state schools – R H Partnership Architects has provided this fast-growing institution with a much-needed, inclusive and sustainable heart. As part of a masterplan exploiting the potential of the college’s restricted site, pressing needs for undergraduate accommodation have been answered with 72 fully accessible en-suite rooms and a welcoming, non-institutional air.
Clear, easily navigable circulation routes are provided inside and out, with level access across the site and sufficient space for people with diverse abilities to move freely. Inside, enhanced accommodation bedrooms – two with adjoining carer rooms – ensure equal access for all. The design also incorporates sufficient flexibility to accommodate a variety of physical, cognitive and learning needs, and is future-proofed to cater for evolving technologies.
The new buildings complement their conservation-area surroundings, yet are highly insulated, meeting Passivhaus standards. The choice of materials balances reduced embodied carbon with longevity and recyclability – the structure is primarily cross-laminated timber – and post-occupancy evaluations reveal one of the lowest energy-use intensities for student housing in the UK.
This pioneering approach to accessibility and sustainability in higher education has been achieved in consultation with health and welfare charity Leonard Cheshire, and with stakeholders including students. The result helps to extend the opportunity for a world-class education beyond a privileged few, improving social inclusivity, nurturing the potential of under-represented students, and unlocking their aspirations to achieve positive impacts across society.
Nyth, Bangor, Wales
Manalo & White Architects for Frân Wen
Aimed at supporting young people from low-income backgrounds to take part in the arts, Frân Wen, a theatre company founded in 1995, works to create exciting, challenging and inspiring Welsh language theatre. Having outgrown its original remit and base, the company sought a new site in Bangor where it could expand physically and creatively.
Despite the additional cost, Frân Wen took the brave decision to move into a redundant Grade II-listed church in this small university city and, in doing so, transform it into a state-of-the-art space for young people to hone skills in performance, scriptwriting and technical disciplines.
From the outset, the architect was deeply involved not just with the organisation but with the youth groups and creative freelancers who would also be future users of the building. The result of this engagement is a robust building with a palette of natural materials, where young people can freely mess around and stretch their imaginations.
The refurbished and extended church features three main artistic spaces including a ‘cellar workshop’ and new reception area along with a green room, dedicated offices and meeting rooms. The re-landscaped churchyard now offers a rainwater-harvested community garden which can be used for open-air rehearsals and community events.
With accessibility a priority, the building is completely step-free and has a lift accessing all levels. With stone, lime plaster scalloped acoustic panels and repurposed pews as wall linings, it has an amazing tactility. The ambition was to invite everyone – even the visually and hearing impaired, to explore the building using the senses.
The thoughtful adaptation of this former church has capitalised on its past role as a hub for the community, enlivened an abandoned city site and transformed it to serve current needs.
Revoe Public Square, Blackpool
Other People's Dreams for LeftCoast
Revoe Public Square is transforming a once-derelict site into a shared civic space co-designed and constructed by the community. The ongoing project engages marginalised groups, facilitates local cohesion and inspires people to think positively and ambitiously about the Revoe area.
It is a collaboration between Other People’s Dreams, LeftCoast and resident-led group Revoelution. The first intervention was a 30m2 circular platform with a sunken 3m area, designed to host programmed events, casual engagement and informal play. The platform incorporates octagonal and square panels, inspired by the form of the adjacent community centre, made from decking boards and bespoke concrete terrazzo slabs. The terrazzo was produced with participants at Revoelution’s hub over the summer and supported by a technical team. The colourful concrete includes demolition rubble, glass from the site, and seashells.
Those developing and delivering the project included members from the local British and Romanian communities and asylum seekers. At a time of heightened tension across the UK among settled and migrant communities, this project has demonstrated how simple acts of collaborative making can bring people together through shared objectives and provide a safe and supportive context through which to raise and address potential points of conflict.
Although the project is temporary, it is testing new methodologies of reuse and fabrication with community participants and hopes to inform existing and proposed regeneration plans. It continues to create a beautiful space and generate local agency in an area where people can feel uncared for, overlooked and unseen.
Severn View Park Care Home, Caldicot, Monmouthshire
Pentan Architects for Monmouthshire County Council
Reshaping dementia care is a high ambition. With a focus on familiar, comforting environments and a strong connection to nature, Severn View Park does just that, elevating residents’ wellbeing by foregrounding involvement, autonomy and purpose.
Across its four spacious, self-contained and determinedly domestic single-storey households are 24 long-term residential bedrooms and 8 short-term rooms, the latter for rehabilitation. Each of these households has direct access to the large courtyard garden – divided into areas of activity, stimulation and calm – with a ‘village hall’ at its centre that serves as a hub for both the residents and the local community, hosting events and classes, and stimulating interaction and inclusion.
Caregiving itself has also been changed in a fundamental manner, with traditional roles and hierarchies replaced by real connections between staff and residents forged at an emotional level – uniforms and nursing stations have been dispensed with, shared experiences prioritised. Everyone, both staff and residents, contributes to domestic life, for instance preparing and sharing meals on a large farmhouse table that acts as a focus for arts and crafts, social events, and more.
By incorporating such often-inaccessible spaces as kitchens into the households’ open-plan designs, 13m² of communal space has been provided for each resident rather than the statutory minimum of 5.1m². Considerable design contributions from staff helped shape the scheme, ensuring both sensitivity and practicality across shared spaces and residents’ own rooms, while the resolute backing of Monmouthshire County Council proved fundamental to the home’s welcome delivery.
The Clearing, Lesnes Abbey Woods, London
WonKy for The London Borough of Bexley
The Clearing is a magical outdoor education space within an ancient woodland and public park in the London Borough of Bexley. It teaches sustainable forest management, nature conservation and traditional woodworking skills through workshops and events and gives children access to natural green space.
Its interactive centrepiece is a large ex-military parachute, which can be erected to create an all-weather outdoor classroom and meeting place. Setting it up is a communal activity. With the aid of a catapult, the parachute is slung over a cable hung between the trees, then participants work together to draw and tether the parachute to a circle of wooden posts, carved by local volunteers into woodland motifs suggested by local school children.
Facing the posts, an old shipping container opens up onto a demonstration stage and is flanked by a small square tower and store room. Inspired by the fishing-net lofts of Hastings, the tower stores and dries the parachute and also houses monitoring equipment so birdsong and other data can be recorded. It is lined internally with plywood and clad externally in Cor-Ten steel with a translucent GRP lantern. The sheltered external store has sawtooth Cor-Ten cladding on the walls and roof and securely stores a treadle-operated pole lathe and shave horse, used for a woodlands greenwood workshop.
Architecture practice WonKy worked closely with custodians and users to co-design the project. The result is resourceful and uses sustainable materials, such as chestnut and oak coppicing from the surrounding woods, to minimise its carbon footprint.
The winner of the MacEwen Award 2025 and the commended projects will be revealed on 27 and 28 January online, and will be featured in our February issue, published at the end of the month.
Many thanks to this year's jurors: Kathy MacEwen, planner, consultant and daughter of Anni and Malcolm MacEwen; Robyn Poulson, architect, BDP London; Steve Wilkinson, associate, James Gorst Architects; Mike Worthington, founding director, People Architects; and John Jervis, managing editor, RIBA Journal (chair).