1. Urban Nature Project, Natural History Museum, London SW7
J&L Gibbons and Feilden Fowles
A magical embodiment of evolution and geological time, given spatial and physical form by rocks, plants and buildings. The remaking of the front garden of the country’s second most popular visitor attraction also provides such useful things as a cafe, a learning centre and improved queueing and access. Educational, enjoyable, exotic.
2. n2 office building, London SW1
Lynch Architects
The practice led by serious-minded architect Patrick Lynch produced two exceptional buildings this year in Victoria, London: an extension to a coroner’s court and a new office building. The latter, poised above broad colonnades of sturdy V-shaped struts, with a miniature glade by muf architecture/art, is generous, handsome and, despite its commercial use, public-spirited.
3. New studio, Hospitalfield Arts, Arbroath
Caruso St John
Part of a programme of reviving an arts centre in an eccentric Victorian castle and its grounds, this is a playful, expressive structure in which fun is had, in the tradition of Arts and Crafts architecture, with eaves, gutters, cladding and other basics of building.
4. Paddington Cube
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
From the architect (and the property company, Sellar) who brought us the Shard. A thing of bulk made crisp and elegant with updated versions of the ferrous engineering that built the famous station next door.
5. Performing Arts Centre, Brighton College
krft
A rich array of internal spaces, including a 400-seat theatre, contained within an arresting shell of scooped brickwork and gravity-questioning overhangs. By the up-and-coming Amsterdam-based practice krft.
