I first became attached to the Norton Folgate project in 2014, when the site was still a tangle of boarded warehouses and forgotten courtyards, a fragment of the old industrial city on the cusp of transformation. Over the decade that followed, I’ve watched this corner of Spitalfields evolve through a process defined not by haste or spectacle, but by something altogether rarer in contemporary practice: collaboration, cooperation, consultation, care and consideration. These are, in truth, the hallmarks of great architecture.
The recently announced Building Design. Architect of the Year Award for One-off Major Project of the Year rightly recognises Norton Folgate as a benchmark for how complex urban renewal can and should be undertaken.
Conceived and delivered for British Land, and masterplanned by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, the project draws together six new buildings, a rich ensemble of retained and reworked heritage structures, and a reimagined public realm that reconnects this historic edge of the City to the living fabric of Shoreditch and Spitalfields.
This is not a singular architectural gesture but a tapestry woven through collaboration. Alongside AHMM, the contributions of Stanton Williams, Morris+Company, and DSDHA bring a distinctive rhythm and diversity to the streetscape. Each practice was encouraged to interpret the site on its own terms, through its own architectural language, while maintaining a shared respect for history, context and craft. The result is a development that feels both inevitable and new: contemporary yet deeply rooted in place.
Norton Folgate is an evolution of thinking about the city itself. It rejects the monolithic in favour of the particular, the corporate in favour of the civic. Its success lies not in a single authorial vision but in the delicate balance between difference and unity, between restoration and invention. The materiality, predominantly brick, anchors it in continuity, while the spaces between, the new yards and courtyards by East Architecture give the scheme its civic pulse.
Norton Folgate has deservedly accumulated recognition: the British Council for Offices National Award for Refurbished/Recycled Workplace, the BusinessLDN BLPA for Best Retrofit Project, and the Brick Awards Supreme Winner. Yet awards alone are secondary to what this project demonstrates. It proves that patient, collective endeavour can yield architecture of lasting quality, work that honours history while addressing the social and environmental urgencies of the present.
To photograph Norton Folgate is to experience a dialogue between eras: Georgian, Victorian, and contemporary London held in careful equilibrium. It is a lesson in how cities can change without erasing themselves. In an age too often dominated by speed and spectacle, this is slow architecture at its most intelligent, considered, collaborative, and humane.
A worthy winner indeed.
