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The Elizabeth Line won Britain’s top architecture award, with judges praising the Trans-London Railway as a “triumph of architect-led collaboration” and “an exemplar of inclusive design”.
The Royal Institute of Architects announced on Wednesday that the £18.9bn transport system, also known as Crossrail, has won the 2024 Stirling Prize, which annually recognizes the country’s best new build projects.
Led by architect Grimshaw and opening in May 2022, the Elizabeth Line was built by a consortium of Maynard, Equation and Atkins Realis.
The bridge, which stretches from Reading through central London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood, shows what well-designed infrastructure can do, especially in a country that seems to struggle with large-scale transport projects. It has become a landmark.
Muyiwa Oki, Riva president and jury chair, said the Elizabeth Line was a “triumph of architect-led collaboration that transformed the typical commuter chaos.” . . Create an effortless experience. ”
“This will rewrite the rules for accessible public transport, setting bold new standards for public infrastructure and opening up the network, and ultimately London, to everyone,” he added.
Three-and-a-half years late and £4 billion over budget, the Elizabeth line didn’t start out as smooth sailing. But the thing about new infrastructure is that once people start using it, it’s all forgotten as it gets grafted into the connective tissue of the city.
Today, more than 700,000 people use the railway each day, and the architectural clarity of its stations and connections, with their sleek, beautifully finished, coolly lit concrete linings, is a sign of the aging infrastructure. It continues to please the often creaky capital.
Stirling Prize judges called the network “an exemplar of inclusive design”, saying its seating, step-free access and “uncluttered double-length platforms” ensure passengers can travel “with confidence”. He said it was helpful.
This year’s Stirling shortlist, which also included the King’s Cross masterplan, housing in east London and Sheffield and the National Portrait Gallery, appears to represent a cross-section of national interests. It was.
Architect Michael Riches’ restoration of the central section of Sheffield’s brutalist 1950s Park Hill mansion is a careful and thoughtful project that treats the original building with respect. It incorporates elements of social housing into what has sometimes been seen as a huge program of gentrification.
At the other end of the scale, Chaudhry Walk is a small mixed-tenant project in the London Borough of Hackney (architect Al Jawad Pike) that is an elegant densification of existing council housing.
National identity is expressed through Jamie Fobert’s extensive makeover of the National Portrait Gallery. Its best feature is its generous reimagining of public space outside London’s institutions, completely but still subtly transforming it.
Wraxall Yard (Clementine Blakemore Architects) has restored dilapidated farm buildings in Dorset and created accommodation for disabled people incorporating an organic farm and 250 acres of renewable landscape.
Finally, the King’s Cross masterplan (architects were Arise, Morrison and Porfirios Associates) became one of the best urban regeneration schemes in the UK. It uses existing industrial and railway buildings to give them grain and character, while commissioning consistently good architects within a considered framework to create both cities and cities. A new, dense neighborhood with an authentic sense of place.
What to do about housing, health, transport, social mix and rural decline is presented here in an engaging way.
If architecture prizes can be biased toward cultural indulgences over infrastructure and museums over heavy industry, this win for the most successful London rail line in a generation may redress that balance a bit.
An enviable example of how architecture can be used to envision new public spaces beneath some of the world’s most expensive real estate, the Elizabeth Line quickly became a must-have.
