Shortlisted in the CULTURE and HERITAGE category

Celebrating and rewarding design excellence in UK architecture, The Architects’ Journal is proud to welcome back the AJ Architecture Awards for a fifth year.

The AJ can reveal the first batch of finalists in the running for this year’s AJ Architecture Awards. Today’s categories are Civic, Community and Faith, Cultural, and Health and Wellbeing

In total, more 140 projects have been shortlisted across 19 categories for this year’s AJ Architecture Awards, the annual showcase of the very best built projects in the UK. The rest of the shortlists will be revealed over the course of this week.

In the Civic category (renamed this year from Public), big hitters AHMM and WilkinsonEyre are battling it out against Wright & Wright’s Lambeth Palace Library, covered by the AJ last year, and buildings by Benchmark Architects, FaulknerBrowns Architects, Jestico + Whiles and Moxon Architects.

Retrofit schemes dominate the Community and Faith category with New Practice’s Kinning Park community centre, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios’ flooring project for Bath Abbey, Jacksons Lane by Citizens Design Bureau and The Nourish Hub in Hammersmith by RCKa making the shortlist.

Meanwhile the nine-strong Cultural category includes Archer Humphryes’ extensive retrofit and extension of Camden’s well-known KOKO concert venue, John McAslan + Partners’ rework of Glasgow’s Burrell Collection and Sheppard Robson’s overhaul of the quirky, Alan Short-designed Contact Theatre in Manchester.

Shortlisted for the Health and Wellbeing category are Scott Tallon Walker with Edward Williams Architects, Hopkins and AL_A.

The expert judges, who have started visiting every shortlisted scheme and will continue to do so over the summer, include Kirsten Lees of Grimshaw, Biba Dow of Dow Jones and engineer Webb Yates co-founder Steve Webb.