New British civic buildings with the architectural panache that continental Europeans take for granted have proved depressingly elusive for a generation.

British architecture’s most dazzling achievements have been either private commissions built here, such as Lord Foster of Thames Bank’s “Gherkin” or public buildings for other countries, such as Lord Rogers of Riverside’s Barajas airport in Madrid. The shortlist announced last night for the UK’s most prestigious architectural prize suggests that a turning point has been reached. The £20,000 Riba Stirling Prize recognises “the building that has made the greatest contribution to British architecture in the past year”.

Three of the six on the shortlist are public buildings: a school, concert hall and courthouse. A fourth is a housing project with one third affordable homes. The others are rail projects built abroad by British practices.

Last year two thirds of the shortlist were overseas projects. Jack Pringle, then president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba), said Britain would become “a dull second-rate society” without better new buildings.

The outlook is now markedly better. Riba describes the new Westminster Academy at the Naim Dangoor Centre, London, by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, as “a striking presence” with “a level of spirited corporate identity that traditional schools lack”.

The Civil Justice Centre in Manchester by Denton Corker Marshall is the largest court house built in Britain since the Royal Courts of Justice. It was described as “a beautifully executed response to a complex brief that has made a significant contribution to the regeneration of this part of Manchester”.

The £100 million restoration of the Royal Festival Hall in London by Allies and Morrison has “reestablished the Festival Hall as a major international venue” while Accordia in Cambridge by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Alison Brooks Architects and Macreanor Lavington, is gimmick-free “high-density housing at its very best”. Zaha Hadid’s virtuoso Nordpark Cable Railway in Austria and Grimshaw/ARCADIS Architecten’s Bijlmer Arena Station in Amsterdam complete the list.

Tom Dyckhoff, architecture critic of The Times, helped to draw up the shortlist. He said: “After 11 years of new Labour investment in architecture we are finally getting public building schemes of a quality we haven’t seen for 30 years.

“These are schools and housing schemes on a proper monumental civic scale. In the 1970s we had some of the most inventive housing projects in the world but, after the oil crisis, the public purse dried up and we barely built any housing or schools until the 1990s. The depressing thing is that the credit crunch will probably cause a lot of projects like these to go belly up.”

The shortlist

- Accordia, Cambridge, by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios / Alison Brooks Architects / Macreanor Lavington

- Amsterdam Bijlmer Arena Station, Amsterdam, Netherlands, by Grimshaw / Arcadis Architecten

- Manchester Civil Justice Centre, Manchester, by Denton Corker Marshall

- Nord Park Cable Railway, Austria, by Zaha Hadid Architects

- Royal Festival Hall, London, by Allies and Morrison

- Westminster Academy at the Naim Dangoor Centre, London, by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

The winner of the the Riba Stirling Prize will be announced in Liverpool on Saturday, October 11, and broadcast on Channel 4 the following day

Source: Riba

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