Natasha Huq: MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice May 2026

Natasha Huq has won the MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice, awarded by the Architectural Review at the Architectural Association in London on 21 May, as part of the W Awards.

A conservation architect with over 15 years in practice, Natasha works collaboratively through repair, reconfiguration and long-term stewardship. Alongside practice, she is an educator and presenter, bringing technical knowledge and close attention to fabric into dialogue with the life of a place. Her approach is measured and precise: stabilising what exists, adapting only where necessary, and setting each decision within a framework of future care.

The prize recognised her work at Preston Tower, Doocot and Gardens in East Lothian — a fifteenth-century ruin that had been inaccessible to the public for forty years. Natasha led a series of careful interventions that secured the structure while opening it to renewed public use. Materials were chosen for durability and repairability. Details were resolved with maintenance in mind. The process brought client, contractor and local residents into shared stewardship, so that the work extended beyond construction into long-term custodianship. The repair of a single stone was understood as part of sustaining the wider site.

MJ Long was an architect, lecturer and writer, born in the US and living in the UK from 1965 until her death in 2018. Her projects include the British Library with Colin St John Wilson (1973–98) and the National Maritime Museum Cornwall (2003) and the Jewish Museum in Camden (2010) in partnership with Rolfe Kentish. The jury comprised Pierre d’Avoine of Pierre d’Avoine Architects, Alice Brownfield of Peter Barber Architects, Betty Owoo of the Greater London Authority, and Sal Wilson, educator and sustainability consultant. Their citation:

“Natasha Huq’s practice shows how architecture can be about building less, and instead about caring for and repairing the existing built environment. Hers is a model for a form of practice that starts from the bottom up: the sticky difficult places that architecture needs to go.”

The W Awards celebrate exemplary work by women and non-binary people in architectural practice and culture, hosted by the Architects’ Journal and the Architectural Review. Congratulations also to the architects shortlisted alongside Natasha: Jennifer Pirie of Henley Halebrown, Rowan Seaford of Carmody Groarke, Evelyne Vanhoutte of Sergison Bates and Pooja Khairnar, founder of PK Inception, the winner of the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture 2026.

You can read more about Natasha’s process in Ruth Lang’s article in the March issue of the Architectural Review, dedicated to the W Awards.

Photography by Agata Noweta Studio