Architects’ Journal’s Architecture Awards 2025 shortlist for Part 3 foregrounds heritage, education and refurbishment as a spine of the year’s discourse on how historic spaces can adapt to contemporary use. Within the heritage category, Saltdean Lido, restored by RH Partnership Architects, stands as a high-profile example of a coastal landmark reimagined for modern needs, balancing conservation with energy-efficient upgrades to keep the 1938 complex vibrant and accessible for year‑round community life. Nearby, Haworth Tompkins’ Warburg Renaissance reinvigorates the Warburg Institute in Bloomsbury, reopening Holden’s historic fabric to public access while expanding teaching and cultural programming and preserving the interior timber detailing that marks the building’s early 20th‑century character. Together, these projects illustrate the AJ panel’s emphasis on responsible conservation that both respects memory and enables active use.

In the same breath, the shortlist recognises signature interventions in dense urban contexts that marry preservation with contemporary programme. Soho Theatre Walthamstow, housed in the Grade II* Granada Cinema, has been carefully reconfigured by Pilbrow & Partners with Bond Bryan to preserve Cecil Masey’s Moorish-inspired exterior and the auditorium’s celebrated interior detailing, while enabling modern programming, backstage upgrades and inclusive access. The reopening in May 2025 marks a milestone in the borough’s culture‑led regeneration, a narrative the Bond Bryan project page frames as a careful balance between heritage sensibility and contemporary audience needs. The inclusion of Saltdean Lido alongside these urban restorations underscores a broader commitment to heritage‑led retrofit as a catalyst for community resilience and ongoing public life.

The education and refurbishment strands complete the picture with a portfolio of retrofit strategies that repurpose and extend the life of existing buildings. The Waterman in Clerkenwell, a major heritage retrofit by Fathom Architects, fuses four Victorian warehouses into a single 70,000 sq ft workspace for BGO, prioritising legible floorplates, new public and social spaces, and an uplifted envelope that reduces embodied carbon. The project’s shortlisting by the AJ Retrofit & Reuse panel for 2024–25 sits alongside Walworth Town Hall, where Feix&Merlin’s refurbishment converts a Grade II* civic landmark into a 50,000 sq ft hub for creative workspaces and a public community centre, incorporating mass timber and a new circulation spine to marry heritage with contemporary use. Taken together, these schemes reflect a shifting ambition within education and public buildings: to teach, learn and create within places that honour their past while offering flexible, inclusive environments for the present and future.

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Source: Noah Wire Services