A Melbourne station makes a beauty list as RSHP's autumn run of news continues
Town Hall Station in Melbourne, Australia, has been recognised on Prix Versailles' List of the World's Most Beautiful Stations, according to a report dated 30 September 2026. Prix Versailles is an international architecture prize, and the station is a project of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP), the London architecture practice. The station had already earned attention in Australia this year. In June it won the Public Design category at the 2026 Australian Interior Design Awards, and Anzac Station, also in Melbourne, was commended in the same category.
The firm's news came thick and fast through September and October. Work started on the British Library Extension in London, with a groundbreaking ceremony on 21 September. A groundbreaking is the event that marks the first digging on a building site. The British Library is the United Kingdom's national library, and the extension will add to its existing home near St Pancras station.
On 17 September, RSHP announced that it had won a design competition, a contest in which firms submit plans and a jury picks one, for Valencia Central Station in Spain. The team includes co-architects ERRE, which share the design work, and engineers Sener, who work out how the structure will stand up.
A week earlier, on 14 September, the Stirling Prize organisers named Tracy Meller, a senior director at RSHP, to the judging panel for the 2026 prize. The Stirling Prize is the United Kingdom's best-known architecture award, and the panel decides who wins it.
In China, the firm finished ONE Shanghai, a mixed-use tower, meaning one that combines different kinds of space in a single building. The tower stands 186 metres tall across 38 storeys on Shimen First Road in Shanghai's Jing'an District, next to Zhang Garden, a historic garden. RSHP reported the completion on 3 August. In June, the building won Best Building and Best Office Building at the Council of Vertical Urbanism's inaugural 2026 China Awards. That same month, the firm completed Phase 2 of the Central China International Convention and Exhibition Centre in Zhengzhou, a large venue for trade shows and conferences. Phase 2 and the Melbourne Metro Tunnel Project were later shortlisted for the World Architecture Festival Awards, which means they made the list of finalists, not that they have won.
Closer to home for the firm, Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks in east London won Planning Permission of the Year at the 2026 Planning Awards. Planning permission is the official approval a council gives before a building can go ahead. The awards were reported on 5 June.
The firm's Hetao Alpha project, according to its own project page, covers 96,223 square metres. The tower rises 212 metres to the top of its central core, the column of lifts and stairs that runs up the middle of a building. Its floor plan follows a butterfly layout, with curved bays of east and west offices spreading out either side of the core.
RSHP's Shanghai office opened in 2011, so 2026 marks its 15th year. For readers outside the industry, the common thread is simple. A single firm's work now spans stations, libraries, towers and planning approvals across several continents, and each stage, from a design contest to a groundbreaking, brings a new team of builders, engineers and local officials into the picture.
