LONDON.- The Royal Institute of British Architects has this evening (Thursday 16 October) awarded House No 7 by Denizen Works the 2014 RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize. The annual award recognises fresh architectural talent and smaller construction budgets.

The considerately playful House No 7 on the Isle of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides is the restoration and extension of a B-listed Tiree black-house crofter’s cottage in a state of disrepair, into a contemporary family home and guest house united by a central glass atrium.

Speaking about House No 7, Stephen Lawrence Prize founder Marco Goldschmied said: 'House No 7 hails from a rich British tradition of buildings which are defined by the location of site and the traditional methods of vernacular construction. The rebuilt cottage and new living spaces cleverly wrap to create an intimate daylight space at its core. The result is an inventive play on typology; the small cluster of different components creates a new identity while sitting comfortably in the landscape amongst other small traditional buildings. It’s an intelligent and witty response to the functional and logistical challenges of location, orientation and isolation and worthy of the 2014 RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize.'

The judges for the 2014 Stephen Lawrence Prize were Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, Doreen Lawrence CBE the mother of Stephen Lawrence, Marco Goldschmied, RIBA Past President and Founder of the Marco Goldschmied Foundation, which established the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize in 1998, Anthony Boulanger, Partner at AY Architects, winners of the 2013 Stephen Lawrence Prize and Joe Morris, Director at Duggan Morris Architects, winners of the Prize in 2012.

The RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize sponsored by the Marco Goldschmied Foundation, rewards the best examples of projects that have a construction budget of less than £1 million. The prize, set up in memory of the teenager who was setting out on the road to becoming an architect when he was murdered in 1993, is intended to encourage fresh talent working with smaller budgets.