Spa vibes with a grow-your-own-dinner option: Britain’s best new building is a revamped almshouse

<p>With its shimmering ginkgo trees, tinkling pools and a rooftop garden, the Appleby Blue Almshouse housing complex for older people is a worthy winner of RIBA’s prestigious Stirling prize</p><p>Described as “a provision of pure delight”, Appleby Blue Almshouse, a social housing complex for older people has been named this year’s winner of the RIBA Stirling prize. With a vibe that has more in common with an Alpine spa hotel than the poky rooms and grim corridors usually associated with housing for elderly people, the building – by architects Witherford Watson Mann – reinvents the almshouse for the modern era as a place of care, shelter and social connection.</p><p>As a building type, the origins of almshouses extend back centuries, giving a semblance of dignity to the poor, the old, the sick and the marginalised. Sequestered from the outside world, with cellular dwellings arrayed around courtyards, they evoke a sense of pastoral benevolence.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/oct/16/appleby-almshouse-britains-best-new-building-riba-stirling">Continue reading...</a>