Croydon council housing scheme was bookies’ least favourite to win but won over judges with its innovative approach to high-density housing on a steeply sloping site
Lion Green Road, a council housing development in south London by Mary Duggan Architects and RUFF Architects, has beaten the odds to be named the winner of the 2026 Stirling Prize.
The 157-home scheme in Croydon, designed with delivery architect RUFF Architects, was handed the UK’s most prestigious architecture prize at an awards ceremony at the City of London’s Old Billingsgate yesterday evening.
The council-commissioned project, Mary Duggan’s first to be shortlisted for the prize, was the bookies’ least favourite to win out of the six shortlisted schemes with odds of 6/1 but was praised by judges for its innovative approach to high-density housing.
Other schemes on the shortlist included an expansion of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge by 2014 winner Haworth Tompkins, which was the bookies’ favourite with odds of 2/1.
Lion Green Road also beat River Wing, Clare College at the University of Cambridge by Witherford Watson Mann, the practice behind last year’s winner Appleby Blue Almshouse.
Last night’s shortlist also included Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s Paddington Square, a refurbishment of the 1970s Hertford Theatre in Hertfordshire by four-times-shortlisted Bennetts Associates and a family home on the edge of Epping Forest designed by twice-shortlisted Sergison Bates.
The winning scheme is a group of five residential blocks which have replaced a former car park in the Croydon suburb of Coulsdon.
RIBA judges praised it for using the topography of the site, which varies in height by eight metres, to create a new “living landscape” providing residents with views across a nearby park and towards a historic railway.
RIBA president Chris Williamson described the project as “thoughtful, resourceful architecture that proves that even the most challenging of sites can be transformed into truly distinctive places for people to call home.”
Mary Duggan Architects director Mary Duggan said the project showed that “architectural ambition, social value and generosity can co-exist within the realities of contemporary development”.
The winners of five special awards were also announced at the ceremony, including York Minster, which won Client of the Year for Tonkin Liu’s Heritage Quad and Technology Hub in York.
Satish Jassal Architects’ Rowan Court picked up the Neave Brown Award for Housing, while Samuel Chisholm Studio and Takero Shimasaki Architects’ Oru Sutton won the Reinvention Award.
The Buttermarket by Architectural Thread was named winner of two special awards, the Stephen Lawrence Prize and The Conservation Award.
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