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The RIBA Stirling Prize judges are distinguished in their fields and come from a range of art and design disciplines.
Best known for his Angel of the North in Gateshead, Antony Gormley's work is primarily concerned with the inner self, expressed in the outer form of the body. He creates sculpture on a grand scale. The terracotta figures in Field 1991, for example, stand just 8-26cm tall, but there are 35,000 of them. The Angel of the North has a wingspan of 54 metres.
Born in London in 1950 and educated in Yorkshire, Gormley studied archaeology, anthropology and the history of art at Cambridge before travelling in Asia and settling in India to study vipassana meditation. He returned to London in the mid-1970s, won the Turner Prize in 1994 and was awarded the OBE for services to sculpture in 1998.
Deborah Bull is a leading figure in the British arts scene. A dancer with the Royal Ballet for 20 years, she was principal dancer from 1992-2001. In 2002, she became artistic director of ROH2, a programme of smaller scale and developmental work at the Royal Opera House. She also sits on the Arts Council England and in August 2003 became a governor of the BBC.
Somehow Bull has also found time to write two books and a column for the Daily Telegraph, to work as a contributing editor for Harpers & Queen and to write and present several television programmes for the BBC. She was awarded the CBE in 1999.
Ted Cullinan is one of Britain's most eminent architects. He has been creating buildings for decades, setting up his own practice in 1959 before establishing Edward Cullinan Architects as a co-operative in the mid-1960s. His firm has worked in all sectors, from residential to business, through arts, health and education. The firm was appointed to design the New Gateway Building for Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden last year.
Cullinan has been awarded no fewer than five professorships; he was elected a Royal Academician in 1989; he is a trustee of Sir John Soane's Museum and the Koestler Award Trust, who promote art in prisons; he was awarded the CBE for services to architecture in 1987.
Isabel Allen has been editor of this year's co-sponsor of the RIBA Stirling Prize, The Architects' Journal, since 1999. Prior to that, she was buildings editor of the same magazine, and has spent most of her working life looking around buildings with architects, not just in the UK, but also in the United States and across Europe. A veteran judge of architectural awards, Allen completed her BA at the University of Manchester before going on to complete parts I and II of her architecture degree at the Universities of Westminster and South Bank.
Francine Houben co-founded Mecanoo Architects, based in Delft in the Netherlands, in 1983. In 1999, she introduced the concept of 'mobility aesthetics' – the ways in which we get around – to the context of spatial planning. Along with Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, Houben is one of just a handful of high profile women architects working in Europe.
Houben is Professor of Architecture and the Aesthetics of Mobility at the University of Technology in Delft and was curator of the first ever International Architecture Biennial, held in Rotterdam in the summer of 2003.
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