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The 25,000 design competition seeks creative solutions to meet the UKs ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes over the next five yearsThe 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 governments 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 AgrawalPooja Agrawal, chair of the 2025 judging panel and CEO of Public Practice, highlighted the importance of combining quality with quantity in achieving the governments housebuilding goals. She said: The governments 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, theres 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 years Peoples Choice Prize, sponsored by Thomas Heatherwicks 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 Peoples Choice Prize. Full details and the competition brief are available on The Davidson Prize website.