Croydon Homes Built on a Steep Old Car Park Win the 2026 Stirling Prize

Britain’s most famous architecture award went this year to a housing scheme built on a former car park in Coulsdon, South London. The site drops eight meters from one side to the other, which is a lot of hill for a place that used to hold parked cars.¹

Lion Green Road, designed by Mary Duggan Architects with RUFF Architects for Croydon Council, won the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026. The Royal Institute of British Architects announced the result at Old Billingsgate in London on October 15, 2026, in the prize’s 30th anniversary year.¹²

The judges’ point was simple: you can pack a lot of homes onto a site without making them dark, cramped or staring into each other’s kitchens.

“At a time when we urgently need to deliver more homes, Lion Green Road shows that density can be achieved without compromising the quality of the places we create.”

That was RIBA President Chris Williamson, speaking for the jury in the institute’s announcement.¹

How 157 homes fit on a slope

The scheme puts 157 homes into five brick blocks that rise between four and seven stories. The brick comes in three shades of brown.¹⁵

Every home is dual-aspect, meaning it has windows facing two different directions for more light and air. Balconies are placed so neighbors don’t look directly at one another, which let the architects set the blocks closer together.¹⁵ Some views look toward the Surrey Iron Railway, a protected historic site that the design also had to respect.⁵

According to the RIBA Journal’s awards entry, the scheme ended up with more homes than its original brief asked for.⁵

The space between the buildings counts too. RIBA describes a “living landscape” for 635 residents, with a new public path from Lion Green Road to nearby parkland, children’s play areas, a sensory trail and allotments, the small garden plots residents can grow food in.¹ The team also aimed to cut carbon by keeping construction efficient, finishes simple and the building process streamlined.¹

“This is thoughtful, resourceful architecture that proves that even the most challenging of sites can be transformed into truly distinctive places for people to call home.”

Williamson said that in the announcement as well.¹

Who the homes are for

Lion Green Road mixes privately owned homes with socially rented ones. When it won planning approval, the plan called for 79 affordable flats and 78 private ones, with the private sales paying for the affordable homes.⁷

Its path to completion had some turns. The project was first commissioned by Brick By Brick, a development company set up by Croydon Council and run at arm’s length from it. When Brick By Brick was wound down, the council took over finishing the job.⁴

The scheme, later called Red Clover Gardens, was then sold to Regen Capital for £38m. According to the Architects’ Journal, the council kept a long lease on 85 affordable rented homes, a slightly different count from the planning figures, and it sublets them to a housing association.⁴

The long shot

By the odds, the win was an upset. Lion Green Road was the bookmakers’ least favorite on the shortlist, at 6/1 with William Hill, and it finished third in the Architects’ Journal readers’ poll.³⁴

Commentary in Building Design read the result as a sign of RIBA’s support for council housing at a pivotal moment for it in Britain.³

Mary Duggan, director of Mary Duggan Architects, framed it in similar terms in RIBA’s announcement:

“We believe the significance of Lion Green Road lies in what it says about the future of housing: that architectural ambition, social value and generosity can co-exist within the realities of contemporary development.”

Here those realities included a steep slope, a developer that was wound down and a sale to a private buyer. The homes got built anyway, and about half of them are affordable.⁴⁷