RIBA Stirling Prize 2014 - shortlist (and winner)

LSE Saw Swee Hock Student Centre (O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects)

The buildings shortlisted for the RIBA 2014 Stirling Prize are:

- Library of Birmingham (Mecanoo Architecten)
- London Aquatics Centre (Zaha Hadid Architects)
- Everyman Theatre, Liverpool (Haworth Tompkins) - WINNER 2014
- LSE Saw Swee Hock Student Centre (O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects)
- London Bridge Tower / The Shard (Renzo Piano Building Workshop)
- Manchester School of Art (Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios)

See a selection of images below with links to descriptions of the buildings on the RIBA website and to the architects' websites;  read commentary by Oliver Wainwright.
The only building on the list that I have properly visited is the Library of Birmingham (with which I was very impressed - see here) but my favourite, based purely on photographic images, is the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre at the London School of Economics, by
O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects. The actual winner of the prize will be announced on 16 October, 2014.
(See last year's shortlist here)

Library of Birmingham (Mecanoo Architecten)

(See also blog entry here)

London Aquatics Centre (Zaha Hadid Architects)

Everyman Theatre, Liverpool (Haworth Tompkins)

LSE Saw Swee Hock Student Centre (O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects) 

London Bridge Tower / The Shard (Renzo Piano Building Workshop)

Manchester School of Art (Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios) 

Daniel Meadows - Library of Birmingham

Daniel Meadows, Portsmouth: John Payne, Aged 12, with Two Friends and his Pigeon, Chequer, 26 April 1974, 1974

Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Work is at the Library of Birmingham until 17 August.
I saw this exhibition when it was at ffotogallery in 2012 and thoroughly recommend it. (I also recommend the Library of Birmingham - see blog entry here.) Read The Iron Room blog  about the exhibition. My own earlier blog is recycled here:
Daniel Meadows  describes himself as a 'documentarist' ...by which I mean that I am one who, in an attempt to make sense of the times in which we live, engages with others to gather, create and present – with as few fictional additions as possible – stories made out of photographs and/or oral testimony.

Meadows graduated from Manchester Polytechnic in 1973. After working at Butlin's, and collaborating with fellow graduate Martin Parr on Butlin's by the Sea, he toured England in a double-decker bus he bought for £360, in search of ordinary people to photograph. In the course of a 14-month journey, he offered free portrait sessions in 22 different towns, and photographed a total of 958 people, alone or in groups, the majority of whom remained anonymous and collected their free portraits the following day.

Once upon a time, I lived in a double-decker bus, reg. JRR 404, better known as the Free Photographic Omnibus. She was my home, my travelling darkroom and gallery.We were an unlikely couple; she with her crash gear box and temperamental ways, me with my bushy hair and homemade flares. But we got along okay and, during 1973 and '74, we travelled about making a national portrait of the English. We covered 10,000 miles shooting pictures and giving them away. 

Read an interview with Meadows on WalesOnline.

Daniel Meadows, portraits from 'Free Photographic Omnibus', 1973-4

Daniel Meadows, portraits from 'Free Photographic Omnibus', 1973-4

Daniel Meadows, portraits from 'Free Photographic Omnibus', 1973-4

Daniel Meadows, Barrow-in -Furness: "Boot Boys", October 1974, 1974

Daniel Meadows, from Butlin's by the Sea, 1972

Daniel Meadows, from Butlin's by the Sea, 1972

Daniel Meadows with 'Free Photgraphic Omnibus' (1947 Leyland Titan PD1), 1974

The Library of Birmingham

I have paid my first visit to the new Library of Birmingham. Externally, the building is very striking and eye catching: essentially, it comprises a stack of blue and gold blocks of diminishing size 'dressed' in a screen of interlocking circles; the whole is topped by a golden, cylindrical rotunda. The form is very simple but the colour and patterning give it a cheerful, if slightly glitzy, shimmer. A world away from the muscular Brutalism (which I love) of the 1970s Central Library it replaces. I was uncertain about the new building to begin with but have quickly come to think it rather wonderful.
Inside it is splendid! Blue railed escalators carry the visitor up into a sequence of exhilerating, book-stacked spaces culminating in the surprise of the Victorian, wood-panelled Shakespeare Memorial Room on the 9th floor. A series of terraces provide excellent views of the city and towards the old Central Library.
The Library of Birmingham was designed by Dutch architectural practice Mecanoo and opened on 3 September 2013 by Malala Yousafzai. Read architectural commentary by Rowan Moore and Jonathan Glancey.

The view from the new Library onto Centenary Square with the Hall of Memory in the foreground and the old Central Library (designed by John Madin and opened in 1974).