Leeds Architecture Awards 2025 shortlist

The shortlisted entries to the Leeds Architecture Awards 2025 have been unveiled.

Transcript

00:00The Leeds Architecture Awards we run them every other year so it gives architects,

00:06developers, property owners a couple of years running to come up with some

00:10really good proposals. So this year, earlier in the year, we invited

00:16proposals to come forward and then over the course of the summer they were

00:20assessed in a two-stage process so it's quite a rigorous process and then we've

00:26ended up in the last couple of weeks with a short list of about a dozen

00:29schemes that will go forward to the awards ceremony which takes place on the

00:366th of November at the Harder Assembly Room. So it's been a few months in the

00:40making but we're really excited that the crop of proposals we have for this year.

00:44There are four main categories so we have a category which is buildings above ten

00:50million pounds in construction value so you can imagine you know the larger tower

00:55blocks that sort of thing. We then have buildings below ten million so that

01:00could be anything from a single house to a community centre something smaller in

01:06scale. We then have a scheme specifically to focus on public realm and this year

01:13for the first time that also includes sculpture and in fact we've had some

01:16really good entries in sculptural form and then the final category is looking at

01:22existing buildings and converting those buildings reusing those buildings we have

01:27a lot of those in Leeds of course. The category for public realm and sculpture we

01:31have the wonderful Hibiscus Rising over near the Tetley building but then we also

01:37have the ribbons sculpture which is of course on Quarry Hill. Buildings with a

01:42construction value of more than ten million include the scape student tower

01:46block which I think is the tallest tower block in the city at the

01:50moment next to the Merrion Centre. A very striking building so that's a very

01:55interesting one. We had other tower blocks submitted as well in the same area

01:59another student scheme a little bit different in design. And then for the

02:05schemes below ten million we had a couple of interesting schemes including a

02:11scheme at Carmanagh High School, a community stroke school building which is

02:17actually made out of containers. Very interesting as well. And then the final

02:23category reusing buildings we had some really interesting submissions there so a

02:28couple of examples of those would be Calvary Old Hall, a very interesting

02:33building that was restored by the Landmark Trust to reveal an Elizabethan

02:38Freeze, so that was one of the entries there. And then the other one that I

02:43would mention is the Hyde Park Picture House, very familiar building to lots of

02:46people, recently extended, recently restored, that was another example from

02:51that category. So you know others I could mention as well but you know it's

02:55actually a very high quality crop this year and it's going to be very hard to

02:58decide on the winners I think.