Our Urban Nature Project for the Natural History Museum has received a 2026 RIBA London Award, with Associate Director, Matthew Glen, collecting a further Special Award for Project Architect of the Year! The RIBA Awards have charted a cultural journey across the UK, reflecting how architecture has responded to changing needs in society. The twin crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are two of the most serious issues of our time; the Urban Nature Project has been recognised for leading the debate on how we can revitalise nature within our cities.
The project reimagines the museum’s five-acre gardens, creating significant new areas of habitat and biodiversity, presenting the grounds as both an urban oasis and living laboratory. In response to the urgent need to better understand the UK’s changing urban nature, the project unites geology, horticulture, palaeontology, interpretation and architecture to better engage people with the natural world. Two new pavilions, the Nature Activity Centre and Garden Kitchen, are integrated into the landscape, providing vital learning spaces, a science lab, volunteer and gardener facilities and a visitor café. In keeping with the ambitions of Alfred Waterhouse’s ‘cathedral to nature’, this once forgotten landscape is now South Kensington’s most significant new public space.