Which New Building Deserves The Stirling?
The Guardian handicaps the potential winners of one of the biggest prizes in architecture: ‘As often, this year’s Stirling prize shortlist sets out to compare what can’t be compared – as if one had to decide what is better between, say, a shirt, a piece of cheese, an app, some nice music or a chair. It’s in the nature of such awards. The underlying absurdity is part of the fascination. Do you, for example, go for the building on the list that, 100 years from now, will be the most remembered, in which case the winner is definitely the Shard? Do you go for the oomph and impact you get when you chuck a vast budget at a building, which gives you either the Shard or the London Aquatics Centre (pictured)? But both have blatant flaws as pieces of design and/or planning. Either would represent a rapid return to the bombastic and “iconic”, which the Stirling prize only recently seemed to have rejected.’
