From a spruced-up Big Ben to Cambridge's crystal doughnut Stirling prize for architecture shortlist unveiled

"Rather like contenders for best in show at Crufts, where the perfect chihuahua is obliged to do battle with the perfect great dane, the new British buildings vying for this year's Stirling prize for excellence in architecture are supremely dissimilar in scale, style and purpose. The shortlist encompasses a medical research centre, almshouse, college of fashion, two houses and a quintessential national monument. Geographically, though, they are conspicuously less disparate, with four schemes in London, one"

"Historically associated with pastoral benevolence and distressed gentlefolk, the almshouse gets a modern reboot by architects Witherford Watson Mann. Their Appleby Blue development in Bermondsey, London, is a place of care and shelter, but above all, social connection. The human theatre of residents in its voluminous garden room can be appreciated from the street through a glazed walkway projecting out along the main facade like a shop window. The idea was to build right in the heart of the community,"

The Stirling Prize shortlist pairs supremely dissimilar new British buildings in scale, style and purpose. It lists a medical research centre, an almshouse, a fashion college, two houses and a national monument. Appleby Blue almshouse in Bermondsey by Witherford Watson Mann provides care, shelter and social connection via a garden room visible from the street through a glazed walkway. Appleby Blue is consciously extroverted, intended to avoid marginalising older, poorer people and harms to their mental and physical health. Herzog and de Meuron's Discovery Centre for AstraZeneca is a mammoth crystalline doughnut on a peripheral Cambridge biomedical campus that nods to the college court archetype.

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