Liverpool Everyman wins Riba Stirling Prize 2014
Liverpool's Everyman Theatre has won the Riba Stirling Prize for best new building of the year.
The venue beat five other buildings to win the honour and Riba president Stephen Hodder called the Everyman an "exceptional new building".
The Theatre – is associated with launching the careers of the likes of Bill Nighy, Julie Walters and Pete Postlethwaite. It first opened in 1964 on one of Liverpool's main streets.
Architects Haworth Tompkins were designed a new theatre as part of a nine-year £27m rebuilding project, and they have retained its theme of being a "theatre for the people".
The old building was demolished and then rebuilt so that it could be recreated as a warm and inviting building.
The building's façade features 105 punched aluminium panels portraying life-size images of Liverpool residents. Locals queued to have their pictures taken, with the successful chosen to have digital versions of their pictures etched onto the metal sun shades. These can be seen as you walk pat the building, making local people stars.
The theatre said it was "thrilled" to win the award."The Everyman was built with humanity at its heart," artistic director Gemma Bodinetz said.
Steve Tompkins of Haworth Tompkins said: "Winning the Riba Stirling Prize is an enormous honour for our project team and our clients, the reward for an intensive collaboration over almost a decade, during which we have grown to love the Everyman and the great city that it serves.
"It is also an important endorsement of our studio's ethos and an encouragement to carry on working the way we do, despite the pressures all of us are under to speed up and dumb down. We couldn't be more delighted."
The other short-listed buildings included London's Shard, the Library of Birmingham, and Manchester School of Art, the London Aquatics Centre and the LSE Student Centre were also nominated.
The Everyman is currently housing Bright Phoenix – a new play which looks at the changing face of Liverpool and regeneration.
