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The Architects\u2019 Journal has published the first tranche of shortlists for the 2025 AJ Architecture Awards, with 120 completed projects across 19 categories highlighting a renewed focus on adaptive reuse and schemes that combine social value with robust sustainability measures; winners will be announced at Royal Lancaster London on 27 November 2025.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Architects\u2019 Journal has revealed the first tranche of shortlists for the eighth AJ Architecture Awards, with 120 completed projects competing across 19 categories in this year\u2019s national celebration of built work. The lists \u2014 being published over the course of the week \u2014 cover everything from community hubs and health centres to major leisure arenas; winners will be announced at a dinner at Royal Lancaster London on 27 November 2025. According to the awards\u2019 organisers, every shortlisted scheme will be visited by the judging panel before the final decisions are made. <\/p>\n
The judging process is being overseen by a panel of industry figures and returning experts, who are assessing entries not only for design quality but for how projects meet or exceed their briefs, engage clients and communities, and perform against sustainability targets. The AJ has made clear that each project must have been completed between 1 January 2024 and 31 July 2025, and that the judges will be rigorously analysing the environmental measures and long\u2011term resilience of shortlisted work. <\/p>\n
Among the Community and Faith shortlist, RCKa\u2019s Highgate Newtown redevelopment stands out as an example of social\u2011infrastructure thinking: the practice describes the scheme as a redevelopment of a former Territorial Army hall into a civic hub arranged around a new public courtyard, with 41 homes delivered to cross\u2011fund the community facilities. The project\u2019s public realm moves and pedestrian links are presented as deliberate attempts to stitch together adjacent neighbourhoods and to integrate the scheme sensitively within a conservation area. <\/p>\n
The Cultural Project category features a number of high\u2011profile retrofit and reuse interventions. The Architects\u2019 Journal highlighted Selldorf Architects\u2019 controversial works to the National Gallery\u2019s Sainsbury Wing, a project the practice says creates a clearer at\u2011grade arrival, a larger foyer, improved sightlines and daylighting and a new forecourt while retaining key historic qualities. Also shortlisted are Cooke Fawcett\u2019s light\u2011touch retrofit of Cockpit Studios in Deptford \u2014 described by the architects as securing and expanding affordable maker space with passive, low\u2011energy measures and a public garden \u2014 and additions by AOC to Locomotion and by Jon Matthews Architects that signal the awards\u2019 growing appetite for careful, conservation\u2011minded reuse. The AJ also notes that several of these retrofit projects have been recognised across its Retrofit & Reuse programme. <\/p>\n
In the Health and Wellbeing category, Adam Richards Architects\u2019 St Raphael\u2019s Health and Wellbeing Centre for Mayfield School is shortlisted. The practice frames the building as a domestic, non\u2011clinical facility informed by Maggie\u2019s typology, combining counselling and treatment spaces with communal facilities and a material strategy that includes cross\u2011laminated timber and a limestone brick palette, alongside mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and other low\u2011carbon measures. <\/p>\n
Leisure shortlists capture the scale and ambition of recent entertainment\u2011led regeneration. Populous\u2019 Co\u2011op Live in Manchester \u2014 presented by the practice as a music\u2011first, 23,500\u2011capacity arena with a compact \u2018smart bowl\u2019 geometry \u2014 appears alongside the Printworks transformation; the arena team highlights rooftop solar, LED systems and air\u2011source heat pumps among the sustainability measures intended to reduce operational carbon while supporting placemaking and year\u2011round public use. <\/p>\n
Taken together, the shortlists suggest two clear tendencies in UK practice over the awards\u2019 eligibility period: a renewed focus on retrofit and adaptive reuse, and a consolidation of projects that pair social value with demonstrable sustainability strategies. Judges will be looking for evidence that such claims are more than aspiration \u2014 that community engagement, lifecycle thinking and embodied\u2011plus\u2011operational carbon strategies have been followed through beyond conception. <\/p>\n
The remaining shortlists will continue to be published through the week; all shortlisted projects will be featured in Architects\u2019 Journal coverage ahead of the winners\u2019 announcement at Royal Lancaster London on 27 November 2025. The awards website provides entrants and readers with further details on remit, judging and practical arrangements for the programme. <\/p>\n