RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist: Darbishire Place, Peabody Housing

UK Construction Media takes a closer look at Darbishire Place,the RIBA National Award winning building, that’s been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize.

Darbishire Place is a Peabody Housing Association block located on John Fisher Street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The five-storey building joins a group of six housing blocks that are surrounded by an internal courtyard. Most of the flats are triple aspect with balcony spaces at either end of the floorplate.

An elegant open staircase is located in the central core of the building, with the amply spaced, well-lit flats situated around a central corridor. The building is built from brick with deep recast reveals, framing large windows and balconies.

 

Darbishire Place (c) Nick Kane

The £2.3M project was designed by Niall McLaughlin Architects for and was constructed on a vacant site in Henry Derbyshire’s Peabody Estate from 1870.

Darbishire Place won a RIBA National Award in June, before making the final shortlist of six buildings for the RIBA Stirling Prize. The winner is to be announced in October.

Discussing Darbishire Place, RIBA stated: ‘This is a brilliant piece of urban design. The dignified new building, with its refined proportions and details, replaces a well detailed and proportioned Peabody mansion block taken out in World War II by a V2 bomb, along with another block whose footprint now provides a garden at the heart of the newly completed courtyard still graced by the remaining three Edwardian blocks.

‘Internally the plan naturally invites you to use the stair – and what a stair: residents must feel a million dollars, like stars on an ocean liner, all graceful curves, an elegant swooping hand-rail and all that top-light. All but the smallest flats are dual aspect. The plan also allows each flat a vestibule off the landing, an enclosed space they can fill with plants or the over-flow of their flats, it doesn’t matter because it is theirs. The balconies likewise: each has a generous deep balcony from which to watch the children play in the safe square.’

Darbishire Place (c) Nick Kane

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