Lion Green Road Housing in Croydon Wins the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026

Lion Green Road, a housing scheme of 157 homes in Coulsdon in the London Borough of Croydon, has won the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026. The Royal Institute of British Architects announced the result on 15 October at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London, naming the project by local practices Mary Duggan Architects and Ruff Architects as the best new building in the UK.

Croydon Council commissioned the development, which mixes private homes with homes for social rent across five blocks. Its site was a steep and awkward plot that had previously served as a car park.

Star-shaped blocks on a sloping former car park

The five buildings are staggered down the slope and linked by shared gardens that weave between them, giving neighbours everyday places to meet. Each block has a faceted, star-like plan, turned so that the outlook changes from one building to the next and so that every flat faces in two directions and gets more daylight.

Three complementary types of brick clad the facades. Together they hold the group together as one neighbourhood, while letting each block keep a look of its own. RIBA president Chris Williamson said the project shows that high-density housing “can be achieved without compromising the quality of the places we create”. He added: “Through a consistent specification, with subtle variation in height and orientation, it offers housing at scale without uniformity.”

Why the jury chose the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 winner

The jury credited the two practices with “addressing the pressing need for national housing” and with homes that give residents generous access to daylight, greenery and each other. Its citation called the scheme “more than a housing development”, describing a place where people can connect with one another and with nature.

Williamson described Lion Green Road as “a new kind of garden neighbourhood” and as “thoughtful, resourceful architecture that proves that even the most challenging of sites can be transformed into truly distinctive places for people to call home.”

The fourth housing project to take the prize

Lion Green Road was picked from a shortlist of six buildings revealed in July. The prize has gone to the best new building in the UK every year since 1996, and this is only the fourth time a housing project has won it, after Accordia in Cambridge in 2008, Goldsmith Street in Norwich in 2019 and Appleby Blue Almshouse in London last year. Other recent winners include London’s Elizabeth Line in 2024 and the New Library at Magdalene College in 2022.

RIBA handed out its Special Awards on the same evening. Satish Jassal Architects received the Neave Brown Award for Housing for Rowan Court, a group of brick social housing blocks in Seven Sisters. The Reinvention Award went to Samuel Chisholm Studio and Takero Shimazaki for Oru Sutton, a co-working space inside a former department store, and the Client of the Year Award was given to Tonkin Liu Architects for the York Minster Centre of Excellence.

Architectural Thread took two prizes for The Buttermarket, a community hub for the arts in Cornwall: the Conservation Award and the Stephen Lawrence Prize for emerging talent.