Mary Ward Centre, Stratford

2025 RIBA London Award 

AWW for Mary Ward Centre
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 2,890m²

Mary Ward, a Victorian writer and philanthropist, was a pioneer of the Settlement Movement, which was established to address social inequality and hardship. Founded in 1895, Mary Ward Settlement’s original mission was to empower the urban poor to enrich their lives through its campaigning for social justice and provision of open access to education, a mission that endures. Today’s centre is the only provider of adult education services in east London, combining this with access to legal support, social justice and community services. 

The charity’s activities were previously split over two sites in central London and it needed to consolidate operations. The motivation to relocate to east London also reflected a growing awareness that its social need was more pronounced, and that Mary Ward herself would likely have been drawn to this location for that reason.

Seeing the potential in Queensway House, an unassuming but tired 1970s concrete-framed office building on Stratford High Street, the Mary Ward Centre invited AWW to investigate whether the site could accommodate both of their functions together: legal services and adult education.

The team’s studies showed that the existing area offered around 60 per cent less than the required brief. However, after intrusive investigations, the structural engineers concluded that the existing concrete frame could take two additional storeys, offering the project a clear direction. Saving 4 per cent embodied CO₂ along the way, the route to transform Queensway House into a vibrant community hub was set.

In its reinvented state, the new centre is immediately welcoming and energising. Its interiors are bold and gutsy, the bright yellow stair and punchy signage providing clear navigation around the building. Yet this is also a serious building, with a clear mission and social purpose, and so the design successfully combines a material robustness with qualities of finesse and sophistication.

The retained frame has been left exposed internally and allows the attachment of the new structure and the services to be clearly read and understood against it. Where the original structure sat back from the pavement, the new staircases now occupy this zone, animating the street and bringing light into the open breakout space on each floor. Activity was present throughout the building and visible to the street, and the centre has made many local partnerships to successfully connect it with its new context.

Inclusivity and accessibility are fundamental social drivers of the Mary Ward philosophy, and here they were embedded in the design and construction process – through co-design, community engagement and the circular economy (all of the loose furniture was repurposed). This also includes impressive, far-reaching social value and ongoing post-occupancy evaluation (POE).

The jury’s impression was that this building exemplified how deep retrofit can succeed, achieved through passion and determination on all sides, showing how a ‘background’ building can be transformed into a joyful beacon for the wider community’s benefit. That it does this while also transporting the ‘spirit’ of the predecessor buildings is a testament to how closely the team worked with the client.

See the rest of the 2025 RIBA London winners here. And all our RIBA UK Award winners here.

View the full RIBA UK Awards 2025 process.

 

RIBA Regional Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and Velux