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The judges of the 2025 Davidson Prize have selected the three finalists in this year’s design ideas competition – Streets Ahead: The race to build 1.5m homes.

Battling to be crowned winner, the teams will each receive £5,000 to develop their concepts for the final stage of the competition. The teams will also receive communication workshops with Creative Partner and leading visualisation studio Hayes Davidson to help them develop their storyline and visual assets, which they will be presenting for the final judging stage.

Attracting radical and imaginative ideas from across the UK, this year’s brief asked multidisciplinary teams including architects to develop design ideas that will help unlock the UK government’s ambitious target of building 1.5 million homes over the next five years. Teams were asked to focus on a community of 300 homes in a real location anywhere in the UK, with submissions looking at housing solutions for urban and suburban sites as well as protected rural locations.

The shortlisted projects of the 2025 Davidson Prize are:

• Ash Sakula with Human Nature 1 House, 2 Homes… make a neighbourhood
• Clifton Emery Design, Nudge Community Builders, Millfields Trust, Plymouth Energy Community, Devon and Cornwall Planning Consultants 300 Homes within a Union Street Mile
• FLOC, MAZi, Hyem, Stef Leach, Broaden, Thurston Illustration, SHED, Artis, Henna Asikainen Positive Disturbance – Realising Brownfield Potential

The winner of the Davidson Prize 2025 will be announced during a live ceremony on 10 June 2025 at Heatherwick Studio Making House as part of the London Festival of Architecture. The winner of the 2025 Davidson People’s Choice Prize sponsored by Humanise, which this year received almost 2000 votes, will also be revealed on the night.

In addition to £10,000, the winning team will receive a week of Hayes Davidson’s support to help them engage key decision makers in UK housing with their concept, with the ultimate goal of transforming brilliant and radical ideas into real-life projects that deliver more housing for the UK.

The 2025 Finalists

Ash Sakula with Human Nature

1 House, 2 Homes… make a neighbourhood

A new model that builds more homes on less land while enhancing the public realm, fostering active streets, and creating space for local economies and green infrastructure. On a test site at Seaham in County Durham, 1 House, 2 Homes doubles density without increasing footprint. By integrating seamlessly into existing streets it makes infill and large-scale urban regeneration faster, more viable and less carbon-intensive than car-dependent expansion.

The innovative house typology ensures every home has its own front door and reduces per-home material use, operational carbon, and infrastructure strain while delivering high-quality, affordable homes at scale.in human-scale design, maxi

Clifton Emery Design, Nudge Community Builders, Millfields Trust, Plymouth Energy Community, Devon and Cornwall Planning Consultants

300 Homes within a Union Street Mile

A model for the delivery of community homes in Union Street, Portsmouth that can be applied to high streets across the UK. 300 Homes sensitively places a sequence of affordable rented homes with co-living features into the rich grain of an established urban high street, with multiple small interventions reinforcing the equilibrium of the whole community as well as local economies.

Made off site and designed to a 600mm grid (from cabinet to room to home) the concept is replicable and energy efficient, providing imaginative communal spaces such as shared kitchens, workspaces and food growing areas alongside secure and comforting private home space.

FLOC, MAZi, Hyem, Stef Leach, Broaden, Thurston Illustration, SHED, Artis, Henna Asikainen

Positive Disturbance – Realising Brownfield Potential

Positive Disturbance is an adaptive framework for transforming brownfield sites into thriving places where homes, landscapes, communities and economies can grow together towards a reimagined future. On an ex-industrial test site at Clasper Village, Gateshead the project explores ways of redefining urban living as a dynamic, evolving ecosystem – rooted in place yet adaptable anywhere in the UK.

As part of a living landscape, the lifetime neighbourhood of diverse tenures draws on positive ideas of degrowth to foster coexistence between humans, wildlife, and ecology while reimagining resources, movement, and sustainability.

Jonathan Falkingham, 2025 Judge and Founder and Director of Urban Splash said:

“We were looking for the exciting communication of bold and do-able ideas around delivering new homes and communities. It was a tough call selecting from a brilliant longlist of 16 diverse and imaginative concepts but our three finalists really nailed this year’s brief. I can’t wait to see how the finalists develop their proposals in the next competition stage.”

Lucy Watson, 2025 Judge and Commissioning Editor, House & Home at the Financial Times said:

“It was a challenge choosing the three finalists from the longlist but we felt the chosen three teams proposed solutions that were well thought out and contextual in their approach, whilst also providing a framework to be replicated across the country. It was very inspiring to see the thought and care put in by the teams to understand their community and its needs through collaboration with local organisations and public outreach. I look forward to delving deeper into their submissions at the next judging session.”