Affordable Plymouth high-street housing proposals wins 2025 Davidson Prize

The winner of this year's Davidson Prize is 300 Homes within a Union Street Mile, a proposal that imagines the transformation of Plymouth's high street with "pattern book" housing.

It proposes the revival of the port city's Union Street by gradually repurposing and extending its disused units to create affordable housing and shared amenities for residents.

The design team, which includes London studio Clifton Emery Design and local community society Nudge Community Builders, has won £10,000 to develop the initiative.

They will share the prize with their collaborators, Plymouth-based agency Millfields Trust, local charity Plymouth Energy Community and Devon and Cornwall Planning Consultants.

The Davidson Prize is a competition focused on the concept of the home, launched in 2021 by The Alan Davidson Foundation in memory of architectural visualiser Alan Davidson.

This year's winning project was selected from a shortlist of three, each designed in response to a brief named Streets Ahead: The race to build 1.5m homes, which called for proposals to create 300 homes on real sites across the UK.

According to the jury, 300 Homes within a Union Street Mile was chosen for its "potential to be transformational".

"For too long, the sector has relied on and incentivised housebuilders as the primary solution to meeting ambitious housing targets," said jury chair Pooja Agrawal.

"This proposal challenges that norm – demonstrating the need for more collaborative, grass-roots and innovative approaches that we believe are genuinely scalable," she continued.

"It captured all of our imaginations – not only for its mission to unlock the potential of our high streets and its commitment to affordable housing and community empowerment, but also for how precisely it identifies the barriers that local people and initiatives face when trying to engage with our planning and financial systems."

The winning proposal 300 Homes within a Union Street Mile imagines the creation of affordable housing along Plymouth's high street, complete with various co-living facilities.

To facilitate the transformation, the team has taken a "pattern book" approach of pre-designed housing types, based on an adaptable and modular grid.

This grid is designed to be scalable, with the potential to "regenerate more than 7,000 high streets across the UK", the team said.

The Alan Davidson Foundation was revealed yesterday during a ceremony held at Making House, the self-designed office of Heatherwick Studio, as part of the London Festival of Architecture.

In addition to £10,000, the winning team will receive a week's support of architectural designer Hayes Davidson to develop the design and "engage key decision-makers in UK housing with their concept".

Alongside the winner, a People's Choice Award, sponsored by designer Thomas Heatherwick's Humanise campaign, was awarded to the shortlisted project FUNNEL. Designed by London studio A is for Architecture, consultant WSP and landscape architect Spacehub, FUNNEL proposes using a mix of standardised designs and financial incentives to densify neighbourhoods in Melksham.

Last year's Davidson Prize winner was Studio Saar, which proposed a housing concept that reused the UK's vacant retail spaces. The project also took home the People's Choice Award.

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