They Asked for 80 Homes — He Gave Them 157! Council Housing Miracle Named Britain's Best New Building

This cluster of pink and brown brick towers in Croydon, rising above the Bluebell woods and framed by rolling hills, has won the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize. If Andy Burnham is looking for inspiration for his great "return of council housing," he should visit Croydon. There, on a steep slope under the canopy of mature trees, sits a complex of crystalline pink and brown brick towers, where the apartments...

If Andy Burnham is looking for inspiration for his great 'council housing comeback', he would do well to visit Croydon. There, on a sloping site, under a canopy of mature trees, is a cluster of crystalline pink and brown brick towers, where generous flats look out over a landscape of playing fields, playgrounds and the rolling hills of south London beyond. Designed by Mary Duggan Architects with Ruff Architects, the building is a model of council-led housebuilding – so much so that it has been named the best building in the UK this year, confounding outsiders' luck.

Only once before has the RIBA Stirling Prize been awarded to a council housing project, when Goldsmiths Street in Norwich was awarded the gong in 2019 for its rows of low-energy brick terraces designed by architects Michael Riches and Cathy Hawley. This year's winner, Lion Green Road in Coulsdon, is a completely different animal, returning to housing design at a time when the government plans to inject £39 billion into the sector. It is also a bittersweet endorsement of Croydon's long-standing housebuilder, Brick by Brick, a bold and brief experiment by the previous Labor government, which stalled in 2020 when the council went bankrupt and several projects were cancelled.

The double quotation marks focus on housing design at a time when the government plans to inject £39bn into the sector.

"At a time when we urgently need to deliver more homes, Lion Green Road shows that density can be achieved without compromising the quality of the places we create," says RIBA chairman Chris Williamson. Through fixed profiles, with subtle changes in height and direction, it offers housing in a scale without uniformity.

Burnham's first £10bn allocation, announced in August, is planned to start 70,000 affordable homes across the country. Yet few people in the UK welcome the prospect of new housing in their own backyard, even if the prize is a winner. A planning application for the Green Lion Road, submitted in 2017, received 18 letters of support and 257 objections, mainly about the loss of parking. Now, almost a decade later, the project shows how more homes than you might imagine can be built in the most hopeless of places in a compassionate way, without sacrificing greenery, views and public access – as well as maintaining plenty of parking.

"We really pushed the envelope with small front and back gardens, as opposed to the car-dominated suburban model of terraces," says Duggan. The original brief called for 80 houses, which he said were laid out, but Duggan proved he could fit 157 flats distributed among five gazebo-like towers and preserve the site's mature trees and woodlands of blues. The result appears to be out of its woodland setting, with a public path winding its way through the site, to a historic railway embankment at the rear, with not a perimeter fence in sight.

"Brick by Brick was an amazing client," says Duggan, who had a small project in Crystal Palace on the council's housebuilder's drawing board before pulling the plug. "It was a refreshing change from the way private developers thought about affordable housing. Here, they weren't talking about land as a commodity, but as a real public asset."

The council also cared about the interior spaces. Thanks to the blocks' "wheel" plan, with beds radiating outwards from a raised central core, each house has a dual aspect, maximizing natural light, cross-ventilation and views. The apartments all have internal verandah balconies, with overhangs at the base of the railings to accommodate plant pots, while cutouts in the form (to preserve historic views) create some of the larger roof terraces. For efficiency, the five towers all have a star-shaped plan, but each is cleverly rotated to reduce direct overlooks between neighboring houses, enabling the buildings to stand close together without sacrificing privacy. Half of the flats in the two towers are private rentals, while half are affordable, in three council-maintained blocks rented at Local Housing Allowance rates. Unlike the Norwich project, this is not real social housing.

RIBA judges describe the project as "a new kind of garden neighbourhood". Rather than being an afterthought designed with it in mind, the space between the blocks is a consciously planned Planit-IE landscape architecture exercise that includes a sensory garden, plot and play areas. Walking around the development's zig-zag slopes and stepped paths will give you the feeling of exploring a bucolic hill town. The little insect hotels with the same faceted star shape as the towers are a delightful touch. Even insects find a dignified abode.

Dagan says the project "expands the idea of ​​the threshold," making the entry feel more welcoming than most. The entrance to each block is framed by a paved terrace, with seating and planting, while all have generous lobbies, regardless of period. It's a far cry from the apartheid "poor doors" in many housing estates, where private landlords receive hotel concierge services while affordable tenants move in behind bins. It all adds up to quality on a budget, with a choice of three dusty brick colors, some of which pop to create a textured, tweedy finish. The quality defies the tight construction budget of £2,500/sq m - making it the cheapest project on the shortlist. Other contenders for the Stirling Prize this year included two outstanding projects for Cambridge colleges, a large private house in Essex, an arts center in Hertford and an £825m office block in Paddington.

If there's a cloud hanging over Croydon's victory, it's brick-by-brick fate. It was set up in 2015 as a wholly owned council company, as the conventional development model failed to deliver enough affordable homes. The idea was for Croydon to use its own land, often small remaining sites, and borrow against its own resources, to build a mix of private and affordable housing, while making a profit into the public pocket. But it found sites were often more complex than expected and added extra costs, while financial forecasts were overly optimistic and Brexit and Covid caused major delays. Housing experts attribute its downfall to poor financial structure, governance and risk management, rather than a failure in development expertise or quality of delivery.

Nevertheless, Brick by Brick has built 751 homes, more than half of which are affordable, with a design quality higher than most developers' standard fare. With the refinancing of housing by the central government, might there be an opportunity to revive some stalled projects, and spread more imagination and innovation from Sabz Shir Road across the city and beyond?