RIBA Announces 2025 National Award Winners: 20 Architecture Projects from Retrofits to Cultural Landmarks

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the 20 winners of the 2025 RIBA National Awards, recognising the most significant contributions to architecture across the UK. Presented annually since 1966, the awards celebrate design excellence and provide a valuable snapshot of evolving architectural, cultural, and social trends. This year's winning projects span the length and breadth of the country, from the Isle of Wight to Scotland and Northern Ireland, and represent a wide range of typologies and scales, from major institutional buildings to small-scale residential and community-focused interventions.

From Thessaloniki to Augsburg: Architecture Now and New Project Announcements by Populous, HENN, SLA, and More

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As cities worldwide navigate evolving social, environmental, and cultural priorities, recent project announcements showcase how architecture is increasingly conceived as both civic infrastructure and a catalyst for collective identity. From Populous' new stadium design in Thessaloniki that blurs the lines between sport and urban life, to HENN's transparent cultural stage in Augsburg that invites community participation, these projects illustrate architecture's expanding role beyond its immediate function. In Luxembourg, Schmidt Hammer Lassen's work for the European Investment Bank reimagines institutional spaces through sustainability and heritage, while SLA and GHD's new island community in Toronto pushes forward nature-based, climate-adaptive urbanism. This edition ofArchitecture Now brings together diverse yet interconnected efforts to shape how architecture can support long-term ecological, cultural, and civic impact.

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Bidadari Park / Henning Larsen

Located within Bidadari Estate, a new public housing estate in Singapore, Bidadari Park is envisioned as a 'community in a garden.' Previously a multicultural cemetery, Henning Larsen's transformation of the 13-hectare park honors the site's heritage-rich history, creating a natural, inclusive space right at the doorstep of the community. By integrating placemaking and active mobility strategies to support the vibrant population, Bidadari Park is an accessible destination, centered on the resident's needs- one of a growing community.

AD Government Office / Agata Kurzela Studio

This space is under a dramatic, undulating roof, on the last level of a heritage building. It had been designed for a government body overseeing major public projects that also hosts workshops and exhibitions. A key challenge was the fluctuating office occupancy because of varying numbers of external consultants. Rediscovering the building's architectural qualities, its genius loci, was at the core of this concept. We focused on the clarity of the previously underutilized space, and reestablished its logic through the addition of volumes that pay homage to the architectural proportions in an act of creative archeology.

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