Goldsmith Street, a highly energy-efficient development of almost 100 homes for Norwich City Council designed by Mikhail Riches Architects with Cathy Hawley, has won the first Neave Brown Award for Housing.
The award, named in honour of the late Neave Brown (1929 – 2018), recognises the best new example of affordable housing in the UK. Projects eligible for the award needed to have won a RIBA Regional Award (Goldsmith Street won in RIBA East); be 10 or more homes completed and occupied between 1 November 2016 and 1 February 2019; and have one third of the housing be affordable and demonstrate evidence of meeting the challenge of housing affordability.
Chair of the Neave Brown Award for Housing Jury, Immediate RIBA Past President Ben Derbyshire, said:
“Goldsmith Street is an exemplar for social housing. Over 10 years in the making, the architects, working with the City Council, have shown impressive sensitivity and prowess at every stage of the process. The result is not just a highly desirable new neighbourhood for Norwich, but homes of the highest quality and most exacting environmental standards. That the outcome appears so naturally at ease in its context requires skill and determination belied by the scheme’s apparent simplicity.
The UK urgently needs more ambition and creativity to drive the housing revolution that is needed, and Goldsmith Street shows us how it can be done.”
Find out more about Goldsmith Street, which also won the 2019 RIBA Stirling Prize.
