Norwich passive house scheme wins Stirling Prize

Goldsmith Street is a development of 105 passive house certified new homes for Norwich City Council, designed by architects Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley. 

The announcement was made at a ceremony last night, 8 October, in London's Roundhouse. "We are beyond thrilled. Thank you to @riba and to the judges," read a post on Instragram from architects Mikhail Riches. "It’s been a huge team effort – the culmination of 11 years of hard work and dedication by everyone involved. Thank you to every single one of the entire team who worked on it."

"The purpose of our practice is to create buildings people love. So above all, it’s been such a pleasure to see the residents enjoy living on Goldsmith Street. Thank you to them for their patience and generosity recently in welcoming the visitors and cameras to their homes.” 

Meanwhile the adjudication panel for the Stirling Prize said of Goldsmith Street: “Goldsmith Street is a modest masterpiece. It is high-quality architecture in its purest, most environmentally and socially conscious form. Behind restrained creamy façades are impeccably-detailed, highly sustainable homes – an incredible achievement for a development of this scale. This is proper social housing, over ten years in the making, delivered by an ambitious and thoughtful council. These desirable, spacious, low-energy properties should be the norm for all council housing.”

Other key members of the project team included contractor RG Carter, M&E engineer Greengauge, passive house designers WARM and clerk of works Enhabit. Goldsmith Street will be profiled in detail in the next issue of Passive House Plus, which is due out at the end of November.