Stirling Prize-winner in last five for Europe’s biggest architecture prize

The six-storey, multipurpose university building in south-west London is competing for the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture against a timber Spanish social housing project, a co-working scheme in Berlin, an urban farm on a former railway line in Paris and an art and architecture museum in Belgium.

But there was no place among the finalists for Carmody Groarke’s Hill House Box in Helensburgh, SelgasCano’s Second Home offices in Holland Park and David Chipperfield Architects’ revamp of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie, all of which had also made it onto the 40-strong shortlist for the accolade.

The prize, also known as the Mies van der Rohe Award and usually biennial, is widely recognised as the highest accolade in European architecture. It was last won in 2019, before the Covid pandemic, by Lacaton & Vassal for its innovative retrofit of three 1960s slab blocks in Bordeaux.

The contest jury will visit all five finalists for the 2022 prize next month.

This year there are also two contenders for the emerging architects category: BDR Bureau’s Enrico Fermi School in Italy  and a 28-unit co-operative housing project in Barcelona by architecture collective Lacol.

The winners of both prizes will be announced at the end of April with a prize ceremony held on 12 May at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.