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News: Stirling Prize judge Tom Dyckhoff has spoken of being “punched in the gut” by the house-inside-a-castle that clinched the award last night, although its architects missed out on the usual £20,000 cash bounty, as organisers RIBA failed to find a sponsor.

“It ticked all the criteria of the Stirling Prize, which is a list as long as your arm,” Dyckhoff told Dezeen. “But it also punched you in the gut in a way that is really hard to explain.”

The renovation of Astley Castle in Warwickshire by Witherford Watson Mann is the first individual house and the first restoration project to win the award, which goes to the building deemed the greatest contribution to British architecture in the last year.

“It’s really easy to be romantic about ruins,” added Dyckhoff, journalist and co-presenter of BBC’s The Culture Show. “You know everyone loves a ruin and its history, particularly in this country. But the building was utterly magical. It was intellectual, it was clever, it was incredibly pragmatic, it was affordable, it was clever right the way down to the smallest detail. It had a great concept and it had the great details, and that is a really winning combination and it was magical and romantic.”

However the winning architects missed out on the £20,000 cheque, which has been handed to every Stirling Prize-winner since the award’s inception in 1996.

“We thought we would find a sponsor but we didn’t,” said RIBA Head of Awards Tony Chapman. “It’s sad”. Chapman said he personally called all the shortlisted architects to explain that there would be no cash prize this year.

Architect William Mann nonetheless described the win as “fantastic” and said he believed this year’s shortlist represents a “return to the values” of architecture. “[The project] has been an opportunity to communicate the values that we’re interested in,” he said.

Stephen Witherford added: “I believe very strongly that old and new buildings work together. Sometimes we try to separate them, but there’s a happy coming together here.”

The project was initiated by architectural charity The Landmark Trust, who launched a design competition for a holiday house that could be created within the decaying twelfth-century structure.

“It was really exciting for us to take the ruins of a historic building and to do something completely new in it,” said Landmark Trust director Anna Keay. “Normally we follow a relatively straightforward approach with preservation jobs, but to have resolved upon something more adventurous and to find Witherford Watson Mann to realise an adventurous approach to historic building was to us, as the clients and The Landmark Trust, incredibly exciting and I hope this has given inspiration to others.”

The 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize was awarded last night in a ceremony at the Central Saint Martins campus in London. Read more about the project in our earlier story.

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architecture prize – but no cash appeared first on Dezeen.

A contemporary house inserted behind the crumbling walls of a ruined twelfth-century castle in Warwickshire, England, by Witherford Watson Mann is one of the six projects nominated for the 2013 Stirling Prize (+ slideshow).

The mediaeval Astley Castle was once the home of an aristocratic English family, but has stood as a ruin since the 1970s, when a devastating fire wiped out the hotel that occupied the building at that time.

Without a budget to restore the building, architectural charity The Landmark Trust launched a competition for the design of a holiday house that could be created within the decaying structure and announced London studio Witherford Watson Mann as the winner in 2007.

The architects designed a two-storey residence that would squat within the building’s chunky sandstone walls. Clay brickwork was used to infill gaps in the structure, creating a visible contrast between the new and old structures.

Laminated wooden beams form a new system of floors and ceilings, creating living areas and bedrooms in the oldest part of the castle.

The wooden roof also stretches over extensions added in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, but instead of blanketing these spaces it simply forms a hollow canopy, creating entrance courtyards that are exposed to the rain.

Four bedrooms, with space to sleep eight people, occupy the lower level of the house. An oak staircase leads up to the first-floor living room, where the architects have increased natural light by adding two new windows.

Astley Castle is one of six projects shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, which is awarded to the building that has made the greatest contribution to British architecture in the past year. Other projects nominated include an elliptical chapel and a museum that mimics volcanic formations.

Other castle renovations on Dezeen include one converted into a mountain museum and one used as an art gallery. See more castles on Dezeen »

The post Astley Castle renovation
by Witherford Watson Mann appeared first on Dezeen.