The jagged form of the Shard, western Europe's tallest building, is set to compete with the piscene curves of the London Olympics swimming pool for the title of best British architecture for 2014. Both structures have been selected on the longlist for the Stirling prize, the £20,000 annual gong awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba).
The choice pits Renzo Piano, the Italian designer of the 87-storey tower by London Bridge, against Zaha Hadid, whose Aquatics Centre on the Olympic Park in east London became the architectural star of the 2012 Games, seizing gold from the rudimentary main stadium.
Genoa-based Piano started his career working with Richard Rogers on the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Hadid has previously won the prize twice, for an academy school in south London and an art gallery in Rome. Despite the Aquatics Centre opening for business two years ago, Hadid had entered it now because it reopened to the public this February without its temporary seating "wings" that somewhat spoiled her flowing design.
Users have described paddling under its swooping roof "like swimming in a spaceship".
Piano's Qatar-owned tower has become a new city landmark, dividing opinion between those who see it as a striking emblem of the capital's 21st-century confidence and those who consider it a totem of London's sell-out to international capital.
Also on the longlist of 56 national and European award winners announced by Riba last night are the Library of Birmingham, designed by the Dutch firm Mecanoo, and the redevelopment of King's Cross station by John McAslan and Partners. Among the museums and galleries are the ship-shaped Mary Rose Museum by two-time Stirling winners Wilkinson Eyre Architects, and the Seizure Gallery at the Yorkshire sculpture park, designed by Adam Khan Architects for the Arts Council.
Despite the presence of the Shard, the longlist shows how during the economic slump, architects have relied on public-sector clients for the opportunity to innovate. The Riba judges pointed to the "big and bold Brent civic centre and the creation of an elegant new public square and cafe in Great Yarmouth, both by Hopkins Architects; the delightful and tactile new Everyman theatre in Liverpool by Haworth Tompkins and an exciting new crisply-designed youth centre in Lewisham by young architects RCKA".
"These buildings show the challenges that can be overcome with pure architectural creativity," said the Riba president, Stephen Hodder, himself the first-ever winner of the Stirling prize in 1996. "In the case of the LSE's student centre, a vertical labyrinth was created to deal with a constricted London site. At the TNG youth centre in Lewisham, the architect helped find funding to enable the building to happen; and with the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, the design team resolved the most complex brief: strict atmospheric conditions on a historic site. It is evident that each building on this year's list has been a labour of love but worth every penny and effort."
