Blinking eye bridge favourite for Stirling prize

Gateshead's triumphantly "non-wobbly" millennium bridge was yesterday tipped to take Britain's biggest architecture prize in a victory over London's initially unsteady equivalent.

After Yorkshire's Magna Centre beat southern competitors to win last year's £20,000 Stirling prize, the £17.7m Gateshead millennium bridge shot to 2-1 favourite when this year's shortlist was announced by the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Gateshead's pedestrian bridge, known as the "blinking eye", spans the River Tyne in the shadow of the Tyne bridge. It opens in a pivotal movement, likened to the raising of an eyelid, allowing ships to pass underneath.

The designers - Wilkinson Eyre Architects - also produced last year's winning Magna Centre in Rotherham, and next month's award ceremony will conveniently take place at the nearby Baltic, Gateshead's new centre for contemporary art.

Paul Collard, head of programme development at the Newcastle and Gateshead Initiative, said it was good news for the cities' joint bid for European capital of culture in 2008, which could generate an extra £700m income for the area.

He said: "Our architecture has made us the most photogenic of all the cities bidding. Architecture is key, but if you look back on the sordid affair that was London's Millennium Dome, the quality of our team's organisation and programming also gives us confidence."

Another key competitor on the shortlist of seven is the armadillo-shaped Downland Gridshell at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in Chichester, West Sussex. Described as a cross between a "bulging peapod" and "the shell of a triple peanut", this £1.6m eco-timber gridshell is a modern version of a medieval tithe barn.

Next is a six-storey, inner-city London primary school. The Hampden Gurney Church of England primary school occupies an old second world war bomb site near Paddington, and features a curved glass frontage and a rooftop playground.

The £5m Dance Base in Edinburgh consists of four dance studios constructed on the lower slopes of the volcanic crag topped by Edinburgh Castle, which students of Egyptian belly-dancing can peer at through a glazed roof.

The Richard Rodgers Partnership's £70m Lloyd's Register of Shipping building with its slender glass lift towers is part of an expensive facelift to the City of London. The less-expensive millennium wing of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin has been called a masterpiece of symmetrical natural lighting.

Finally, the open-plan administrative building for clothing retailer Ernsting, in Coesfeld-Lette, Germany, is another reminder that this is a competition for British architects but their work can be anywhere in the European Union.

Norman Foster Architects' "wobbly" millennium bridge over the Thames was notably absent from the shortlist after its designers failed to enter it for the awards. The firm's British Museum Great Court was also absent, but both will still be eligible next year.