In recent years, individual houses - either all-new or radically altered - have made a stronger and stronger showing in the awards and have proved a valuable spur to the reputation of their (mostly young) designers. House design is a very fertile area right now, with an interesting mix of people commissioning it. But what this year’s selection demonstrates is that there is absolutely no consensus - not only as to what a house should look like, but even what a house should be. A house might be effectively an art gallery for a private collector (that’s the corned-beef one in Chelsea by architect Tony Fretton, costing £3.5m) or it might be a second home, or a holiday let, or a retirement project, or even house for a never-ending succession of visiting artists, as is the case for the Artist’ House at Roche Court outside Salisbury.

There, the indefatigable Lady Madeleine Bessborough, who runs the Roche Court country estate as the New Art Centre, a huge and changing sculpture exhibition, first built an acclaimed gallery for smaller works by architect Steve Marshall of Munkenbeck and Marshall, and has now brought them back to add the £240,000 house: part guest-house, part gallery in itself. Let no-one say that the landed gentry are not interested in contemporary art and architecture: at Roche Court, the dialogue between old and new, landscape and buildings, is both exquisite and natural. The judges speak of “serenity and beauty”, not to mention “workmanship, integrity and clarity”.