Bee Breeders has announced the RE-Stock London Housing architecture competition, in collaboration with the Bartlett School of Architecture and in partnership with ARCHHIVE BOOKS.

London, like many major cities, is constantly in need of more affordable housing. And for the RE-Stock London Housing competition, participants are tasked with revisiting the city’s existing iconic council housing in order to think of new solutions to London’s shortage.

RE-visit, RE-imagine, RE-invigorate and RE-think council housing by either extending them or echoing their concepts throughout the city.

The RE-Stock London Housing competition is open until May 12, 2020, with winners of the US $6,000 prize to be announced on July 14, 2020. 

Competition

Looking at different iconic housing schemes, participants are free to either extend these existing buildings and transform them, or by echoing their spirit with newly design buildings on a site of their choice within London.

This architecture competition requires participants to be bold and think outside the traditional box. How can housing be an answer to some of the questions we are facing today – community cohesion, limited energy consumption, reducing the carbon footprint, food production, construction methods and so on.

Winning participants will need to apply unique strategies as well as creative designs to tackle the housing crisis, while at the same time remaining in keeping with the city’s situation and heritage.

Competition Programme

The participants are asked to design either extensions to existing housing developments or to design new housing schemes which can be easily rolled out to increase capacity of housing stock.

No minimum size or amount of the residential units per block is defined. The proposals should be flexible enough to adopt in different sizes with different inhabitant capacity requirements.

Designs for the RE-Stock London Housing should be flexible to different locations across the city. The designs should also be adaptable, allowing adjustments to be made in order to suit different residential capacity requirements.

Download full competition brief for more information!

Eligibility

Competition is open to all. No professional qualification is required. Design proposals can be developed individually or by teams (4 team members maximum). Correspondence with organizers must be conducted in English; All information submitted by participants must be in English. 

Prizes

Total prize fund: $6,000

1st prize: US $3,000 / Publications Certificate of Achievement

2nd prize: US $1,500 / Publications Certificate of Achievement

3rd prize: US $500 / Publications Certificate of Achievement

BB Student Award: US $500  (more details here) / Publications Certificate of Achievement

BB Green Award: US $500 (more details here) / Publications Certificate of Achievement

The competition will select 6 Honorable Mentions.

Publication: The winners will get international art and design media coverage and will be featured on the Bee Breeders website and social pages. 

Winners will be included in the ARCHHIVE BOOKS “What is Affordable Housing?" second edition print publication.

Certificate: Bee Breeders will also acknowledge the outstanding performance of all winners and honourable mentions with Certificates of Achievement.

Jury panel is composed of Audrey McKee from Renzo Piano Building Workshop in France, Carlos M Guimarães – depA, correspondent of A10 magazine in Portugal, Daniel Jacobs from SHoP Architects, New York City, USA, Gemawang Swaribathoro from OMA, Hong Kong, John Paul Rysavy from SHoP Architects, New York City, USA; And-Either-Or Austin, Texas and Brooklyn, New York, USA. 

See the competition's full jury panel here. 

Key dates for the competition

Closing date for registration: 12 May, 2020

Closing date for project submission: 17 June, 2020 (11.59pm GMT)

Announcement of the winners: 14 July, 2020

Competition brief, photographs and 2D - 3D images of the site can be downloaded from the competition website. Contact Bee Breeders to receive special student rates for group registrations (discount applies for 3+ registrations from one university/school) and to receive further information and support for getting your students involved in architecture competitions. 

All images courtesy of Bee Breeders 

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