RIBA Stirling Prize 2007 Stirling Prize Shortlist

Date Published:

23/06/2008

Dresden Station Redevelopment
Foster + Partners - Germany

Credit: Nigel Young

Although not totally destroyed by allied bombing during the infamous Dresden Raids, this 19th century train station was badly damaged and suffered further from unsympathetic repairs and alterations. It's symbolically appropriate that the new work should have been designed by a British practice.

Credit: Nigel Young

Foster + Partners won the competition on the strength of their proposal to re-roof the damaged train shed with a lightweight fabric roof, instead of reproducing the heavy timber and glass roof that had previously existed. This allowed a light touch to the repair of the steelwork, as well as providing 13 per cent more natural light. The people of Dresden approve.

Young Vic Theatre

Haworth Tompkins - London

Credit: Philip Vile

The Cut is a cheerfully scruffy part of south London into which, in the 1970s, architect Bill Howell introduced the Young Vic at a cost of a mere £60,000. Times and prices change, but Haworth Tomkins have remained true to the ad-hoc aesthetic of the original while radically expanding opportunities for actors to make theatre and audiences to enjoy it.

Credit: Philip Vile

The existing auditorium has been painstakingly reconstructed to satisfy new technical requirements yet retain the audience/performer relationship that distinguished its predecessor. The judges agreed that this project's merit, demonstrated by its very detailed and careful response to the challenge of remaking somewhere that, so far as its audience was concerned, had never been broken, was an achievement that demanded recognition.

Watch the 3MW video of the Dresden Station Redevelopment and the Young Vic Theatre >>