The Davidson Prize 2024 theme is: Rethinking Home – Adapt and Reuse. This is an annual design ideas competition recognizing transformative architecture of the home. The prize exists to celebrate innovative design ideas, to encourage multi-disciplinary collaboration and to promote compelling visual communication.

Brief:

Once upon a time three little pigs built three detached homes from scratch – and the cleverest pig built their house out of bricks, rather than sticks or straw. Times have changed – the ‘wolf’ is now global warming and biomaterials are being seen in a new light. Today, the two urgent imperatives of climate change and housing shortage are converging to demand an ambitious rethink of what an ideal home might be.

The Davidson Prize 2024 is asking multi-disciplinary creative teams to explore inventive and compelling design ideas to persuade renters and buyers that an ideal home might not be detached like those of the three little pigs – or surrounded by a white picket fence – but will be an exciting new product of upcycling, recycling, mining and creative reuse that reimagines traditional ideas of home and ways of living.

You’re asked to choose any existing non-residential structure/s in the UK or Ireland – from a disused farm building to a high street, an office block to an oil rig – and to explore how it could be upcycled, retrofitted and/or mined to provide exemplary sustainable housing for a minimum of five homes. Submissions should demonstrate key organizational, structural and environmental principles while also zooming in on the experiential qualities of a typical home.

Key considerations include design that:

• Creates new homes while reducing carbon impact
• Reimagines living environments for a sustainable future
• Integrates recycling, upcycling and/or biomaterials
• Makes a compelling case for a new kind of ideal home

Entries must:

• Clearly communicate how the proposed design employs upcycling, retrofit and/or sustainable materials
• Demonstrate the benefits of multi-disciplinary collaboration (single company entries will not be considered)
• Show awareness of viability, and how the project might engage with communities, social enterprises, local authorities, housebuilders and/or developers
• Effectively communicate design ideas to lay audiences.

Jury:

• Amandeep Singh Kalra, Associate Director at Be First (Chair of 2024 Jury)
• Duncan Campbell, Director at Atelier Ten
• Alice Finney, Design Editor at Elle Decoration UK
• Miles Mitchell, Commercial Lead for Total Synergy (headline sponsor of the 2024 Davidson Prize)
• Annalie Riches, Co-founder at Mikhail Riches
• Alex Turner, Co-founder of Studio MUTT (winner of the 2023 Davidson Prize)

Awards:

• £10,000