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Fed up with year after year after year of the architectural mafia establishment on the Stirling Shortlist…? Stirling Prize for me typifies what is so wrong with architecture today. Meaningless and superficial…! When Michael Gove babbles about architects 'creaming off' fees architects stood together in abhorrence of this statement. Quite right…! But I wonder what the fees were on the Evelyn Grace Academy. I wonder what the budget was… Zaha Hadid last year exclaimed..”PROFITS DOWN” on the front of the weekly architectural news: I Laughed Out Loud. Maybe the finger was pointing at practices like these who are so widely publicised due to accolades such as Stirling oiling their machines..

Practices like Sarah Wigglesworth Architects work so hard for so little I wonder what, if any, profit they actually make when they strive for life changing architecture such as the Sandal Magna School. When Accordia won the prize it looked like things might change. How wrong you can be. What a travesty that practices and projects like this just don’t make the Stirling shortlist….


Its SO great to see a great project like this, a school, a design that really is about the people that use it and not the egos of the architects or the banks that sponsor it. No slick details or glass sharp concrete arrisses. Is this all we must have for architecture to be great…? I’ve been to see many of Le Corbusier’s works in my time and I can tell you they aren’t slick in the least. But monumental they are… STILL, and after so many years: falling down, withered, and beaten many of them are but monumental STILL nonetheless. Will the same be said of any of this year’s Stirling Shortlist in 50 years?

Sandal Magna School is monumental in its own way: For the way it challenges the establishment on how schools can be designed well on a tight budget; for the way that it proves architecture matters without being superficial and slick; for striving to make a difference.

What about an ANTI-STIRLING PRIZE next year for architecture that really matters, or why don’t we just bang our heads on the wall for another year….