Museum buildings in Oxford and Berlin, a new art gallery in Rome and a live/work development in Shoreditch, east London, have made it onto the shortlist for the £20,000 RIBA Stirling Prize 2010.

Included are the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Neues Museum in Berlin; MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome; and Bateman's Row, London. The shortlist is completed by two schools - Christ's College School, Guildford, and Clapham Manor Primary School in London. Now in its fifteenth year, the RIBA Stirling Prize is awarded to the architects of the best new European building 'built or designed in Britain'. The winner will be announced at The Roundhouse, London on 2 October 2010.

Ruth Reed, RIBA president, said: "The RIBA Stirling Prize celebrates architectural excellence and this year we have a remarkable group of buildings on the shortlist. Unique in the prize's history, three major museum buildings make up half of the list, showing us three very different ways of building - and re-building - museums and galleries. "This is also the first year that two schools have been shortlisted for the prize. They represent what all schools should be: light, well-laid-out and well-equipped environments in which all students can flourish.

"A commercial/private building by a young practice - a boundary-pushing take on the future of mixed-use buildings - completes the shortlist. It is one of three projects by practices that have never been shortlisted before." The 2010 RIBA Stirling Prize judges - who will visit the six shortlisted buildings and meet for a final time on the day of the presentation to pick the winner - are Ruth Reed, RIBA president (chair); Ivan Harbour, architect, Rogers Stirk Harbour; Edward Jones, architect, Dixon Jones; Professor Lisa Jardine, historian and writer; and Mark Lawson, broadcaster.

Image: Neues Museum, Berlin