Features: 15 Clerkenwell Close

15 Clerkenwell Close, our six storey mixed-use building with a load bearing stone façade designed with Groupwork + Amin Taha, is one of the UK’s six best new buildings shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize 2021.

What may appear at first glance as a traditional concrete frame clad in stone has a little surprise in store for the keen eye. A closer inspection of the columns will reveal ammonoids, drilled wedge holes and saw grooves indicating that part of the story has not been told. In fact, concrete columns and clip on stone have been rejected in favour of a simple system of solid stone load bearing columns.

‘15 Clerkenwell Close is brave, ambitious, highly innovative and bespoke, where risks have been taken and have paid off, resulting in a truly imaginative, intriguing and astonishing work of architecture,’ says the jury. 

Click here to watch a video about the 15 Clerkenwell Close project.

Our collaboration with Groupwork + Amin Taha and The Stonemasonry Company has resulted in not only the Clerkenwell Close scheme, but in many completed projects using stone structurally. The key to the success relies on each discipline stepping into the other’s domain and understanding how the structural material can become the architecture of a space.

Click here to see all the shortlisted projects