This is a more restrained Stirling prize shortlist, but not lacking in quality

After a livelier than usual 2021, this year sees a return to a more conventionalStirling shortlist. There is nothing here to match the playfulness of Marks Barfield’s Cambridge mosque, or the structural daring of theTintagel Footbridge. But that doesn’t mean 2022’s slate is without interest. In fact, I believe the best of this year’s nominees are as good as any projects we have previously seen in the Stirling.

1 Broadgate’s inclusion comes as something of a surprise, however. It may seem odd to look back at a 1980s real estate development with nostalgia, but I see what has happened to Broadgate in recent years as a rather pointless wrecking exercise. What was a series of urbane buildings and public spaces, has morphed into an incoherent architectural menagerie.

MAKE’s5 Broadgateepitomises the transition away from Arup Associates’ original vision to the current jumbled mess. Hopkins’ building is not that bad, and deserves a commendation for its net zero credentials, but it does feel rather bloated and incongruous in this location.

I am not a huge admirer of fully glazed facades in any context, but it has always struck me as a particularly uninspired choice for the City. It seems especially a shame that Hopkins, with its rich history of masonry structures, was not able to find a more sympathetic way of engaging with the immediate surroundings.

According to the RIBA’s own website, Reiach and Hall’s Falkirk Forth Valley College is harking back to the 1960s. If this is the case, then it is perhaps not the best advertisement for the architecture of the period. This is decent, cost-constrained public architecture, of the sort that many parts of the UK would consider themselves lucky to get. But it is hard to see why this is Stirling material.

The lack of any Scottish entries on last year’s shortlist may partly explain why it’s here, but I’m confident that Scotland has much better to offer. Moxon Architects’ stunning office building in the Cairngorms, for example.

近年来，斯特灵奖得主中有好几位非常可疑。那些被选中的项目似乎主要是因为它们为评审团提供了一些有益的信号。亨利·黑尔布朗的《哈克尼小学》就不属于这一类。像老伦敦董事会学校一样，这是一个美丽的建筑，丰富了它的背景，并为学生创造了一个封闭和培育的环境。

The school building was partly funded by the sale of apartments in the conjoined tower block, which was also designed by Henley Halebrown and is nominated with the school. Although you could argue that it represents everything that’s wrong with how we plan and fund school building in the UK, it’s still an exceptional piece of architecture. In some respects, the realisation of such a substantial piece of design, despite the constraints, makes this an even more remarkable project.

I have written before about how I would like to see more masonry high-rise architecture in London, but somehow Panter Hudspith’s Orchard Gardens at Elephant Park was not what I was envisaging. The lower-level elements are more successful, but the tower itself, with its fragmented façade treatment just feels contrived. You can see what the architects were trying to do, but have to question whether it was the right approach. Maccreanor Lavington’s nearby series of building is surely a more successful example of this type of mixed typology redevelopment.

I find it faintly absurd that Niall McLaughlin has not yet won the Stirling. I don’t know whether the new library at Magdalene College Cambridge is his practice’s best building, but this seems as good a time as any for him to win.

I first encountered McLaughlin at the Bartlett around 2000, where he was giving bemused undergraduates a lecture about his design for a strange, very Bartlett, inflatable houseboat with solar panels and dangly beads. Since then, he has evolved into perhaps the UK’s pre-eminent architect working in the modernist tradition. And he now produces the type of architecture that I imagine Peter Cook once saw it as his life’s mission to eradicate.

The Magdalene library building sits in a long tradition of carefully crafted Oxbridge modernism. Structural masonry, extensive use of timber, subtle plays on simple geometry, and more than a hint of Kahn. This is a building that you can already tell will stand for centuries and be loved by its inhabitants for generations.

Sands End Arts and Community Centre by Mæ Architects is another worthy winner, but one which I suspect will struggle in the face of such stiff competition. It is a beautifully conceived light-touch piece of architecture. Mæ have clearly relished the opportunity to work with this small corner of a Fulham park. Their sandbox included historic structures (the restored and repurposed Clancarty Lodge), the park boundary and entrance, as well as the surrounding park landscape itself.

这是一种古怪的剩余空间，吸引了我们许多最有趣的建筑实践。简单的材料托盘，包括叠层板框架的单层屋顶和砖地板，都经过了试验和测试。但这一切在这里都得到了熟练的处理，传递了一系列安静诱人的空间。你想居住和逗留的建筑。

Ben Flatman is Building Design’s architectural editor