United St Saviour’s Charity’s almshouse Appleby Blue wins Stirling Prize

The 2025 Stirling Prize, RIBA’s prestigious award for excellence in architecture, has been won by Witherford Watson Mann for their new, HAPPI-inspired almshouse design for United St Saviour’s Charity’s, Appleby Blue, in Bermondsey. 

But, that’s not all, on a night of glittering prizes, 2 more prizes were awarded to the team to make it an “Arch de Trio’mph”; the 2025 Neave Brown award for Social Housing and the Client of the Year award to the Charity.

One of six projects shortlisted for this year’s award, the Appleby Blue has already triumphed at a number of other award ceremonies. For example, the RIBA London award and a RIBA National award this year and also the winner of winners at the 2024 Housing Design Awards, supported by the Housing LIN. However, this is the icing on the cake and, as recognised by the RIBA judges, it take on the classic almshouse quadrangle and provides a modern twist in designing 59 quality, age-friendly apartments, utilising beautiful materials, creating accessible indoor and outdoor courtyard facilities and providing a welcoming space for residents, visitors and the local community.

Jeremy Porteus, the Housing LIN’s CEO. commented: 

“Drawing on the care-ready HAPPI design principles, I am immensely proud to have played a small part a decade ago, at the very start of United St Saviour’s Charity’s journey, to shape the then Trustees' vision for a contemporary and aspirational new almshouse on the former care home site in Southwark. 10 years on, by winning the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025, Appleby Blue has sensationally catapulted housing for older people into the mainstream and, more importantly, penetrated the public’s consciousness of what a desirable place to live in can be in later life. We need to build on these factors and generate the choices our ageing population now expects. Congratulations to everyone involved. It is not only a tremendous achievement, it is a great accolade for the retirement living sector.”

Virtually a year on from the publication of the Older People’s Housing Taskforce report and its recommendations, informed by a visit to Appleby Blue by Taskforce members, the standout scheme exemplifies what’s best in class in housing for older people. It also demonstrates that housing an ageing population is fast becoming a mainstream housing issue. And, with a government national housing strategy due later this year, an even bigger prize would now be the inclusion of a design and planning commitment that all future homes must be accessible and age-friendly, built to Part M4(2) as a minimum.

We are also immensely grateful to United St Savour’s Charity for being a long-term supporter of the Housing LIN and sponsoring our dedicated almshouse webpage.

And for more on the Stirling Prize (opens new window) and how RIBA has embraced age-friendly housing, check out their handbook co-written by Levitt Bernstein’s Julia Park and the Housing LIN’s Jeremy Porteus.

If you found this of interest, check out the following resources published by the Housing LIN in recent years on Appleby Blue.