‘A triumph’: London’s £19bn Elizabeth line is named best new architecture in Britain
With its futuristic panels, airy tunnels and elegantly unified design, the 73-mile addition to the tube is a worthy winner of the prestigious Stirling prize – and puts the rest of the creaking, sooty network to shame
W ith the longest platforms, the biggest tunnels and the fastest trains on the entire London underground, the Elizabeth line boasts a dizzying list of superlatives, carrying more people a day than any other train line in the country. It is now deemed to have the best design, too – being named as the winner of the 2024 RIBA Stirling prize for the finest architecture in the UK. The competition was stiff: from the National Portrait Gallery in London to the renovation of the Park Hill estate in Sheffield, from a Dorset dairy farm conversion to a street of social housing in Hackney and the 67-acre regeneration of King’s Cross.
The Lizzie line is a worthy winner, providing a dazzling demonstration that, for all chaos surrounding HS2, Britain is still capable of pulling off gargantuan transport infrastructure projects with style and panache. Stepping off the escalators and entering its streamlined white tunnels is like being teleported to a parallel universe, worlds away from the rest of the creaking, sooty tube network.
