Top designer lands an award double

Zaha Hadid, the designer of Glasgow’s new Museum of Transport, has carried off the UK’s top architecture award for a second successive year.

Her cutting-edge design for the Evelyn Grace Academy, a London secondary school, won the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) Stirling Prize, it was announced yesterday.

Last year, Ms Hadid won the award for Rome’s Maxxi Museum of 21st-century Art.

The academy – the first school to win the prize – defeated the Olympic Velodrome and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new theatre complex, among six structures on the shortlist.

Riba president Angela Brady, chairman of the judges, said: “The Evelyn Grace Academy is an exceptional example of what can be achieved when we invest carefully in a well-designed new school building. The highly imaginative, exciting academy… is what every school should and could be.”

Ms Hadid said: “Schools are the first examples of architecture that everyone experiences and have a profound impact on all children as they grow up. I am delighted the Evelyn Grace Academy has been so well received.”

The prize is for the best new European building built or designed in the UK.