RE-Stock
London Housing

London seems to be stuck in a continuous housing crisis with fewer housing units being built every year. The sale of local authority housing stock under the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme has diminished the available housing stock even further for people in need of a suitable accommodation. Especially during the Post War period, London has been a testing ground for new innovations in housing developments with architects being innovators and champions of social change. But in the last few decades this innovation seems to have stopped.


London is home to some of the most expensive properties in the world, making access to affordable housing almost impossible to all but the very rich. According to a report by UBS Wealth Management, London homes are the second most over-priced in the world, and closely behind Vancouver in its “bubble risk rating”.

The RE-Stock London Housing architecture competition is the Bartlett School of Architecture initiative in partnership with Buildner Architecture Competition Organisers and ARCHHIVE BOOKS where participants are asked to look at existing iconic council housing and RE-visit, RE-imagine, RE-invigorate and RE-think them.


Proposed 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; from left: ALEXANDRA ROAD; BLAFRON TOWER (By Cianboy - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0); ROBIN HOOD GARDENS (By stevecadman - Flickrtik hartua, CC BY-SA 2.0)

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.


Missed the registration deadline?

Enter the next Buildner Affordable Housing Challenge (https://beebreeders.com/housing-crisis)