This Stirling Prize winner is a model for how we can all live better

By Ben Flatman2025-10-17T08:23:00

Witherford Watson Mann’s Appleby Blue scheme shows how thoughtful design can help us age well, strengthen communities and rethink how generations live together, says Ben Flatman

Appleby Blue is a deserving Stirling Prize winner. Witherford Watson Mann’s project for United St Saviour’s Charity is beautifully conceived and finely executed, its palette of materials creating a domestic warmth rarely achieved in later-life accommodation of this scale.

It accommodates 57 one-bedroom flats arranged around a courtyard, with shared spaces that are also accessible to the wider community. From the street, Appleby Blue presents a confident, even austere face, all brick, in keeping with London’s prevailing new vernacular.

This urban presence feels rooted in a long tradition. Appleby Blue channels the mansion block, that most respectable and overlooked of British typologies.

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