AY Architects' Montpelier Nursery wins RIBA National Award

The Montpelier Community Nursery designed by AY Architects – co-directed by Anthony Boulanger and Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Director of Architectural Research at The Bartlett – is one of 52 buildings longlisted for the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize. The new building has already been awarded the RIBA London Regional Award and the RIBA National Award and the architects will learn later this month if they're to make the Stirling prize shortlist.

The nursery is part of Camden Community Nurseries, a registered charity and voluntary organisation providing the most affordable pre-school childcare in Camden.  The project was initiated and designed by AY Architects who engaged with parents and the local community from the very beginning and led all stages of consultation, fundraising, brief development, design and maintenance phases.
 

The new building is planned around a central playspace that generously opens out to a garden of mature trees set within the secluded park of Montpelier Gardens in Kentish Town, London. Children enjoy an imaginative and highly poetic space with fascinating relationships between building, garden, neighbourhood, park and sky. The project has triggered further the active participation of neighbours in the creation of a new garden for the nursery and the beginnings of a regeneration process for the Montpelier Gardens.

Find out more about the project at: www.ayarchitects.com

Image credits: Daniel Stier (top),  Nick Kane (bottom)