Winners unveiled at ceremony recognising design excellence in UK architecture
The Architects’ Journal has announced the 2025 AJ Architecture Awards winners, with five projects by TenderStream members winning or highly commended across six categories, including Design of the Year. The results were unveiled at an event hosted by comedian Paul Sinha at the Royal Lancaster London, bringing together leading voices from across the industry to celebrate architecture’s most inspiring and accomplished projects across the UK.
Selected as Design of the Year, and winning the Refurb Project (£10m and over) category, Bethnal Green Office project by Carmody Groarke transformed a 1970s textile workshop in East London into a contemporary, low-carbon workspace. The existing grey-brick building was enhanced by the addition of a three-storey galvanised steel extension, while open-plan, modular interiors were created to maximise flexibility. The Architects' Journal said of the project: ‘What has been created here is not just an inspired reimagining of a relatively mundane building as mini-landmark, but a replicable model for inner-city workspace regeneration.'
Also in the Refurb Category, Tenderstream members FCBStudios and Grant Associates - alongside Studio Knight Stokoe and Twelve Architects – were highly commended for the retrofit and regeneration of Plant Basingstoke. The building was originally designed for a paper manufacturer in 1973 by Peter Foggo and Arup Associates Group 2, with pre-eminent garden designer, James Russell. Ian Taylor, Partner at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, said: “Plant now stands as a benchmark for retrofitting and regeneration, a space where people and nature thrive in harmony, embodying the values we strive for in every project.”
Described by the judges as an ‘extraordinary piece of architecture’, Co-Op Live by Populous won in the Leisure Project category. As the UK's largest-capacity indoor arena, the arena was created to provide the best possible live music experience, while contributing to the regeneration of East Manchester. Audio-visual technology and acoustics combine with a ’smart bowl’ seating design to deliver the scale needed to attract the biggest international acts, while providing an intimate and atmospheric experience usually only possible at a smaller venue. The design developed through consultations with local people, companies and organizations.
Allford Hall Monagham Morris (AHHM) – in collaboration with Stanton Williams, Morris+Company, DSDHA and East – won best Mixed-use Project with Norton Folgate, and office-led development near Liverpool Street Station comprising three urban blocks with the retention of historic buildings, alongside new construction. The jury praised AHMM’s leadership in ‘managing and working with other architects to create different buildings that formed a permeable neighbourhood,’ and highlighted the sensitive reuse of existing fabric, ‘keeping the memory of the buildings – at times you weren’t sure what was old or new; elsewhere it was beautifully apparent.’
AHHM were also highly commended in the Workplace Project (£10 million and over) category for Assembly Bristol, which transforms a vacant site adjacent to the city’s inner circuit road and William Jessop’s Floating Harbour, creating a new urban space that positively engages with the city, brings colour to the skyline, and links the waterside with a restored historic street. The judges commented that ‘Allford Hall Monaghan Morris’s approach to opening up the site to the city through the cluster of buildings has established a new benchmark for regeneration for the city of Bristol.'
Lucy Nordberg
Tenderstream Head of Research
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