The £25,000 design competition seeks creative solutions to meet the UK’s ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes over the next five years
The Davidson Prize has unveiled its 2025 theme, Streets Ahead: The Race to Build 1.5 million Homes, calling on multidisciplinary teams to explore innovative approaches to placemaking and homemaking. The competition, which aims to address the UK government’s ambitious housing target, challenges entrants to design 300 homes on a site of their choice while considering sustainability, affordability, and community integration.
The brief invites proposals for housing projects across grey, brown, or greenfield sites in urban, suburban, or rural contexts. Teams are asked to balance macro-scale placemaking with the micro-scale experiential aspects of individual living spaces. Areas of focus include the assimilation of housing into its natural and built surroundings, density, materiality, and long-term maintenance and stewardship.
Pooja Agrawal, chair of the 2025 judging panel and CEO of Public Practice, highlighted the importance of combining quality with quantity in achieving the government’s housebuilding goals. She said: “The government’s ambition to build 1.5 million homes requires not only quantity, but quality homes that are sustainable, affordable, and adaptable to the needs of diverse communities.
“While a number of practical policy solutions are being rolled out to achieve this ambitious target, there’s also a need for creative thinking to tackle this from new directions and find unexpected results.”
The Davidson Prize, established in 2020, is open to teams that include an ARB-registered UK architect or RIAI-registered Irish architect. The total prize fund is £25,000, with £10,000 awarded to the winner and £5,000 honorariums for three shortlisted finalists.
This year’s People’s Choice Prize, sponsored by Thomas Heatherwick’s Humanise campaign, will invite the public to vote on their favourite project from the longlist.
Registration for the competition is open until 31 January 2025, with Stage 1 submissions due by 27 February 2025. The winner will be announced in June 2025, alongside the public announcement of the People’s Choice Prize. Full details and the competition brief are available on The Davidson Prize website.
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