Battersea Arts Centre and Bristol Old Vic among national architecture award winners

Battersea Arts Centre, Bristol Old Vic and the Royal Opera House are among the winners of the Royal Institute of British Architects’ national awards for 2019.

This year, seven new performing arts buildings from across the UK were recognised for their significant contributions to architecture.

Other winners included Alexandra Palace in London, the Southbank Centre, Nevill Holt Opera in Leicester and drama school LAMDA.

Battersea Arts Centre, which also won The Stage award for theatre building of the year in 2019, reopened last year following a 12-year restoration project which was extended when a fire devastated the venue’s Grand Hall in 2015.

The project was designed by architects Haworth Tompkins, which is also behind two other performing arts buildings to have won RIBA national awards this year.

These are the Bristol Old Vic, which was recognised for having undergone a “bold reinvention” of its foyer and public spaces, and the new Peter Hall Performing Arts Centre at the Perse School in Cambridge, which was praised by judges for its “magnificent, welcoming front”.

Architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios were behind two of the winning projects; Alexandra Palace’s east wing, which reopened in December last year following a £18.8 million restoration, and the renovation of the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery.

Stanton Williams’ Open Up project for the Royal Opera House in London, which opened up a set of contained spaces to form a new public face for the institution, was praised for making the building “more welcoming, transparent and permeable than ever”.

Nevill Holt Opera’s new 400-seat theatre, which is housed within a 17th-century stable block and designed by architects Witherford Watson Mann, was also among the winners.

Drama school LAMDA was recognised for its new £28.2 million extension, designed by Niall McLaughlin Architects, which was praised for its “robust simplicity”.

Other cultural buildings among the winners included King’s College School in Wimbledon’s new music school, the V&A Dundee and the Weston visitor centre at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

They will all be nominated for RIBA’s Stirling Prize, widely regarded as the most prestigious award in British architecture. The winner will be announced in October.

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