Tower Hamlets Town Hall, Whitechapel

2025 RIBA London Award
RIBA London Building of the Year sponsored by EH Smith
 
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris for London Borough of Tower Hamlets
Contract value: £124 million
GIA: 26,269m²
Cost per m²: £4,720

The Royal London Hospital has been part of the fabric of life on Whitechapel Road for over 250 years, its earliest buildings dating from the 1750s. The hospital moved out in 2012, relocating to a new building immediately to the south and leaving the original buildings vacant. When Tower Hamlets Borough Council decided to bring together its own operations from disparate sites and relocate at the heart of the borough, it committed to extending the hospital building’s long life as well as local people’s personal connections with it.

AHMM’s scheme boldly reinvents the dilapidated and derelict Grade II-listed former hospital buildings, satisfying the brief by overlaying it on the existing spaces and adding a substantial new extension. The approach is at once sensitive and brave, creating a modern, civic home for council administration, local services and democracy, including a flexible council chamber and office space for the council’s 2,400 staff.

The inclusive access strategy cleverly resolves challenges in relation to both the public realm and the interior circulation. On Whitechapel Road, the landscape levels have been subtly lowered to provide access and a glazed shopfront to the Grocers’ Wing, creating a direct relationship with the street. On the wholly public ground floor, ramps seamlessly connect disparate internal levels and link to the public realm.

The junction between the existing building and the new extension is materially rich and spatially dramatic, and each is enhanced by its proximity to the other. Here, the design concept shines brightly, and it is clear the team had equal confidence in handling both the historical fabric and the contemporary extension.

A narrow three-storey-high atrium creates a sense of tension between the two, and is crossed by bridges, allowing the brickwork of the former hospital’s south facade to be illuminated and celebrated. Bricks reclaimed from demolition material were reused in repairs – part of an approach to conservation whereby alterations over time are visible, allowing the building’s story to be read. The interior is further enriched by a characteristically bold colour palette, which was inspired by the retained terrazzo floors, and which also appears in the facades of the new elements.

The council set ambitiously high environmental performance targets, to ensure the town hall would be energy-efficient and cost-effective to operate. With all-electric energy (including from photovoltaic panels), it has earned an A-rated energy performance certificate (EPC) and achieves BREEAM Outstanding for sustainability.

Memories of a former era sing in elements like the Grade II-listed 1906 staircases in the 1750s building, and the operating theatres, repurposed as meeting rooms, where historical fixtures, including stepped seating for observing the ‘theatre’ of medicine, have been retained.

The new town hall is a tour de force of reinvention, combining a sensitivity to the existing building’s story with a sharpness of contemporary detailing. Overlaid with a diverse brief, this has resulted in a building that is vibrant and welcoming and clearly expresses itself as a civic investment for the local community, right at its heart.

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