Melbourne Affordable Housing Challenge

Submission: December 08, 2020
Registration: November 03, 2020
Language: English
Location: Concept
Prizes: Please see details below
Type: Open

Melbourne is the capital city of Victoria, Australia, and holds the title of the country’s fastest-growing city. Melbourne had a growth rate of 2.7% from 2016 to 2017, seeing an increase of 125,000 citizens. Experts predict that in order to keep up with the growing population, Melbourne will need 1.6 million new homes to be constructed over the next 35 years, with estimates putting the population over five million by 2021, and over eight million by 2050.

This dramatic increase in demand, combined with only incremental increases in supply, has resulted in a massive jump in housing prices, with families being hit the hardest by the lack of affordable housing in the city. The average house price in Greater Melbourne is around $836,000, and properties of 105m², a size suitable for families, cost roughly $614,000, putting them out of reach for most families.

The Melbourne Affordable Housing Challenge is the next competition in the Bee Breeders Affordable Housing series, in partnership with ARCHHIVE BOOKS. For this competition, participants are tasked with creating solutions to Melbourne’s affordable housing problem. Designs should be flexible enough to accommodate a variety of inhabitants, from single professionals to couples and families, allowing for each solution to meet their various requirements.

Design solutions should be applicable to locations throughout Greater Melbourne and, as there are no specific requirements on size, location, or facilities, participants are encouraged to be as creative as possible. The jury will be looking for projects that challenge the typical idea of housing, design, and community as a whole, while at the same time offering practical solutions that could potentially see these designs realised.

Selected winning designs will not only receive prize money, but will also be featured in the next ARCHHIVE BOOKS publication on the topic of affordable housing, scheduled for publication in Spring 2021.

Competition Programme:

Design a pilot-phase concept for affordable housing within Melbourne, which can be easily rolled out to increase capacity of housing stock, and is minimal in its use of land and materials.

No minimum size or amount of residential units per block is defined. The proposals should be flexible and adaptable enough to adopt to different sizes for various inhabitant capacity requirements. Designs for the Melbourne Affordable Housing Challenge should be able to adapt to various locations across the city.

Competition is open to all. No professional qualification is required. Design proposals can be developed individually or by teams (4 team members maximum). Correspondence with organizers must be conducted in English; All information submitted by participants must be in English.

PRIZES

3 winning proposals, 2 special awards and 6 honourable mentions will be selected. Bee Breeders will award a total of 6,000 € in prize money to competition winners as follows: