Bath architectural practice Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios has been shortlisted in UK architecture’s most prestigious awards for a third time.
The firm’s design for the University of Warwick’s Faculty of Arts Building has been selected as one of the six projects shortlisted for the 2023 Stirling Prize for Building of the Year.
The coveted annual awards, staged by The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) since 1996, are the highest accolades in architecture, with the winning project regarded as a showcase for British design excellence.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios won the top prize in 2008 for its Accordia Housing scheme in Cambridge and was shortlisted six years later for its extension to the Manchester School of Art.
This year it is in the running with its University of Warwick’s Faculty of Arts Building – described by The Guardian’s architecture correspondent as a “a muscular terracotta teaching block”.
The only shortlisted project outside of London, it has already scooped the RIBA West Midlands Award 2023 and RIBA West Midlands Building of the Year Award 2023.
The building brings together the university’s art departments and schools under a single roof for the first time, creating a vehicle for collaboration and cross-pollination of the arts, while drawing inspiration from the site’s unique parkland context.
RIBA said the architects had “woven these two agendas into one cohesive design concept that has been executed with skill and craft”.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios founding partner Keith Bradley said: “Being shortlisted for the Stirling Prize is very special as an acknowledgement of our work with Warwick University as well as with the wider consultant and contractor team on the Faculty of Arts building.
“What we have created together is a place that students, academics and other staff want to be – facilitating interactive learning and research in a set of ‘live’ physical spaces – having returned from the digital world that dominated in the Covid years.
“Warwick Faculty of Arts is a place that connects its people and the wider natural landscape setting.
“Essential requirements for wellbeing that makes architecture a social and environmental art.”
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, which also has offices in London, Manchester and Belfast, was formed more than 40 years ago and today is viewed as one of the UK’s most progressive and ethical architectural practices.
Its most recent work in Bath includes the Roman Baths Clore Learning Centre and World Heritage Centre.
The Stirling Prize winner will be announced on 19 October.
Photograph of the University of Warwick’s Faculty of Arts Building: Hufton + Crow
