Denver Affordable Housing Challenge competition 1st prize winner - Damian John Madigan

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce the 1st Prize winner of Denver Affordable Housing Challenge competition – Damian John Madigan from Australia!

Damian John Madigan

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

I’m a registered architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of South Australia (to be known as Adelaide University from 1 January 2026, after a merger with the University of Adelaide). Our architecture program is the second-oldest in Australia, having been established in 1906. We have a reputation for undertaking carefully considered design research and education, often in partnership with industry and government. We offer Bachelor and Master programs in Architecture, alongside a Bachelor of Interior Architecture. I’ve worked at the University for 20 years and am a balanced academic, undertaking both teaching and research.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been Involved?

Having come to academia from architectural practice, I undertake practice-based research, otherwise known as research through design. I use design as a process of discovery to understand problems in a way that traditional written research alone cannot. The design process is also used to create suites of visual collateral that diagram, illustrate, and demonstrate research outcomes to broad audiences, from government decision-makers to members of the public. My focus area is on the provision of medium-density infill housing in established neighbourhoods. This commenced in my PhD studies from 2011-2016 and has continued through collaborations and partnerships with other academics, industry, and government. In 2020 I coined the term ‘Bluefield Housing’ to describe the established suburbs, and my bluefield housing model is one where the existing patterns of alterations and additions in low-rise neighbourhoods are harnessed to create additional housing on a lot instead of only making a single-family home bigger. Rather than subdividing an allotment into smaller privatised lots, the old and new housing in the bluefield model is co-located and arranged around a single shared garden. Since 2021 I have been working with the South Australian State and Local Governments on writing a planning code amendment to make my bluefield model legal, with Co-located Housing becoming a new Land Use Definition and permitted form of infill development in South Australia in 2025. This X- MU-X project takes this thinking and applies it to Denver to test the city’s capacity for low-rise infill. In 2024 my book ‘Bluefield Housing as Alternative Infill for the Suburbs’ was published by Routledge. The eBook is Open Access and can be downloaded free from Routledge’s website.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

Architecture for me is both an invitation and an opportunity. In undertaking architectural studies, practice, teaching, and research, we form a cohort of creative thinkers and practitioners whom society invites to help shape our cities. And in our work, we are given the opportunity – and the privilege – of working to create buildings, places, and spaces that affect others’ lives. Sometimes our work will be overt and plain for all to see, but often it will exist in the background, as people get about their daily lives positively affected by the architectural decisions we have made, but appropriately unaware of their existence. Architecture is therefore a way of thinking and responding, and it exists at the scale of the room, the building, the neighbourhood, and the city.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

I enter design competitions because they force me to stretch the boundaries of my work. They often have to be undertaken quickly, which forces me to think and act with clarity and to work instinctively. Competitions also provide crucial peer review of my ideas and their communication. Where a traditional theoretical researcher can write a paper and have it peer reviewed, a design competition – especially one where the entrants cannot identify themselves – gets your ideas in front of international experts who are basing their opinions and judgements solely on the work put before them, and not on who has created it, where they’re from, or their motivations for entering the competition in the first instance. Competitions are crucial for demonstrating the deployability of my work outside my own city. There are very few such opportunities to get valued outside opinions and to demonstrate that an idea can scale.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

If you’re struggling to decide whether you should participate in an architecture competition, my simple advice is to stop struggling and simply do it. Because competitions come at any time of the year, they’re unlikely to neatly meet your existing study or work schedule – you will almost always have to find time to fit them in. But this is a good thing. A competition is a window of opportunity around a defined theme or set of problems. You must work quickly, succinctly, and with clarity and conviction, and these are architectural skills to be honed. Competitions also have parameters. How much can you say about a project in four A2 pages, or in one A4 sheet of text? Can you shorten that 1,000 word pitch into one clever diagram that speaks for itself? Rise to the challenge and embrace the limits of the brief. Architectural competitions will never give you enough time or space to say everything you feel you need to, and that’s their beauty. Use them to sharpen your architectural tools, distil your thinking and communication, and to get your work in front of peers from across the world.