The announcement for the top architecture prize in the UK last night at a special ceremony held at the Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, comes as a resounding beacon to purposeful, sensitively designed and executed architecture, whilst also bearing a plethora of interesting observations. While this year’s winner—the John Morden Centre by Mæ Architects—does not stand in stark contrast to last year’s, the The New Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, by Níall McLaughlin Architects, in terms of a thematic and even aesthetic similarity that can be perceived to appeal to the RIBA judges, the shortlist for this year saw a further slight veering away from a building’s physicality and formal traits, relegated here to ‘responses’ to context and a gamut of sociopolitical challenges that architecture is touted to address, to a robust social programming. The shell of an architecture built around a pertinent social need, an urban redressal, is deemed (and quite wishfully, bound) here to be a success. This is especially remarkable in a capital city as packed as London wherein, especially given that five among the six shortlisted projects are housed here, the social factor—more than outwardly capitalistic ones—yields pockets for illustrative intervention. And while the over-approximation and over-assumption of the “higher purpose” of architecture is what has often lead practices down the labour-exploitation and othering route, the winning building, along with the five shortlisted ones with a particular, well founded proclivity for housing, is tantamount to a step closer to the fruition of that higher purpose. It would be rather incorrect to earmark this as a trend or a leaning, but a much welcomed return to (ironically) form for architecture that is, within the institutional framework of the RIBA at least, a national representation of the best of UK’s newly built work.

The John Morden Centre is designed as a new, consolidated day care centre and healthcare facility for the older residents and retirement community of Morden College. The centre follows an aesthetic and formal language that deftly draws from the Blackheath Park Conservation Area and the bricked, classically proportioned structures of the Grade I listed Morden College complex. According to the architects, the 'datum' for the new face of the building, even individual elements like the ridge and eaves heights and sill levels derive closely from the proportions of the Morden College, and in particular cases, its doric columns. The reverence is near religious when viewed in the context of not just the heritage around, but also of its sensitive programming for older people that proves immediately disarming. That programming—geared towards tackling social isolation and loneliness among the older residents at Morden College—brings together both socially oriented functions including workshops, arts-space, a cafe, and medical functions and facilities including a GP, and physiotherapy and consultation rooms. Coupled with residential facilities, previously spread out across the site, the centre coalesces a diverse programming into a hub of activity and kinship for the older residents.

Formally and structurally, the new centre by Mæ is a typified reinterpretation of the original Almshouse and Chapel, designed and built by Christopher Wren and his master mason Edward Strong respectively. Semblances thus of the classic cloister, steep roofs, and chimneys visibly appear in the public entrance to the John Morden Centre, now characterised by legibility, lush planting, high quality, robust brickwork, and dressed stone sills to reframe the public face of the historic Morden College. This entrance simultaneously affords viewers peeks into the pensively laid out courtyard and the cloister beyond.

A modernistic, timber and brick reinterpretation of the cloister sits nestled just beyond the entrance, overlooking the site’s many trees. Clearly referencing the existing Almshouse, this cloister manifests as an internal circulation corridor hugged by an open green court that softens the inside-outside threshold, and is designed to be occupied all year long with overhangs cutting the summer glare, and its south facing orientation letting in sunlight during the colder months. "The experience of the cloister is a key architectural component of the design,” states an official note on the sensitive design brief and response. "It responds to growing evidence about the value of community in old age, the importance of preventing loneliness, especially as loneliness is twice as unhealthy as obesity for older people. Buildings can play a major part in supporting longer, healthier and independent lives,” states Alex Ely, director of Mæ, doubling up on his belief of a rather transcendental quality in architecture.

Due attention is paid to the criticality of accessible and easy wayfinding in an elderly housing scheme such as this in order to aid memory and cognition. Visitors progressing through the courtyard are led clearly on a route traversing a series of spaces and varied landscaping directly to the main entrance, bearing a distinctly detailed brick texture and rows of climbers unto itself. The perambulatory path around the reformed cloister threads between the mature trees on site—further aids in wayfinding and easy identification of paths—demarcating a number of outdoor rooms that are complementary in function to the main rooms.

Apart from the architectural response, the building’s mediatic representations through photographs touch upon a humbling, solemn facet of age and absence, both in the context of the building and the people occupying it. Alternating photographs capture the unassuming spaces of the building occupied by elderly residents, and in a virgin, near untouched state. On a personal note, the notion of care, hope, and community that is imbibed in the building is driven home if one were to go through the photographs the other way around.

Also read on other projects from the RIBA Stirling Shortlist 2023: Lavender Hill Courtyard Housing

Project Details

Name: John Morden Centre
Architects: Mæ Architects
Gross Internal Floor Area​: 911 sq.m.
Client: ​​​​Morden College
Main contractor: ​​Clive Graham Associates
Structural Engineer​​: Michael Hadi Associates
M&E Consultant: ​​BOOM
Project Manager​​: Calford Seaden
Quantity Surveyor​​: Calford Seadon
Planning Consultant​​: Stanway Little
Landscape Designer: ​J&L Gibbons