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.
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.
