The Laban dance centre in Deptford, south-east London, is the popular winner of this year's £20,000 Stirling prize for architecture.
The award, announced at the Bristol Science Centre on Saturday night, was made by a team of judges - including the novelist Julian Barnes and the singer Justine Frischmann of the band Elastica - who had travelled around Britain in search of the Royal Institute of British Architects' building of the year.
Other contenders included Norman Foster's Great Court at the British Museum, a City of London office block and, at the other end of the spectrum, a romantic ferry shelter on Tiree in the Inner Hebrides.
The Laban centre, designed by the Swiss team Herzog & de Meuron - who gave Bankside power station a new lease of life as Tate Modern - has brought glamour to an old London district which for many years has been in need of cultural or indeed any kind of investment.
Not since the early 18th century has Deptford been the focus of such happy artistic scrutiny. A shimmering, translucent building that changes colour according to the light, the Laban centre is a fine design by a bullet-proof architectural team which has been unable to put a foot wrong since the 1990s.
The centre includes performance spaces open to the public: the aim from the start was to involve the public with an avant garde minority arts project.
Within weeks of opening last year, the centre became a popular landmark as well as one of the world's most appreciated contemporary dance schools. Quite how the judges managed to compare the virtues of a dance school with landscape art, a national museum, and an eco-friendly housing estate is anyone's guess. They are not comparable. But many will appreciate the prize - named after the late James Stirling, an eclectic, globally recognised UK architect - going to European architects.
- Bouw & Wonen Partners:
