Winners of Buildner's MICROHOME #5 competition offer solutions for affordable housing crises

Buildner Architecture Competitions has announced the results of their MICROHOME Edition #5 competition. The annual contest forms part of Buildner’s Small-Scale Architecture series and seeks to entice ideas to tackle affordable housing crises around the world.

The latest competition challenged participants to submit designs for an off-grid, modular structure with a maximum floor area of 270 square feet to accommodate a hypothetical young professional couple. In their proposals, participants were encouraged to “rethink spatial organization and incorporate unique aesthetics, new technologies, and innovative materials.”

The winning schemes have been republished below. 

First Prize: Micro Colony by Misak Terzibasiyan, Amir Feizinezhadgheshlagh, and Thimo Derks (UArchitects)

Jury comment excerpt: "Micro Colony - Fighting poverty and climate change in Bangladesh is exactly the sort of entry jurors receive with enthusiasm. The project attempts not only to resolve the general requirements of the competition project brief, but it steps further to address a pressing, real-world issue specific to a particular region. By doing so, the author has designed in response to regional materials, building techniques and other parameters, yielding an excellent, contextual project."

Second Prize: Degradable Dwelling by Lionel Giordan

Jury comment excerpt: "Degradable Dwelling is a 25m² experimental off-grid house that can be, according to the author, almost entirely built by hand. The design draws from concepts introduced in the 2022 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, a publication which combined design and science to offer suggestions for eliminating waste. The project proposes a microhome built of timber structure and recycled cork blocks, the totality of which can either biodegrade or be reused at the end of the building’s life."

Third Prize + Buildner Student Award: Grounded House by Aleksandra Musiał and Alicja Adela Jarochowska (Warsaw University of Technology, Politechnika Warszawska)

Jury comment excerpt: "Grounded House: A house from earth, about earth, for earth, proposes a partially subterranean house for temperate climates. Primarily constructed of earth, timber and potato cork, the design is square in plan with a perimeter of deep timber members set perpendicular to the interior space. These columns frame the windows, create pockets for the infill of cork insulation, and convey a clean grid-based geometry which organizes the space."

Buildner Sustainability Award: A Pallet Size House by Eloy Bahamondes, Lucas Vásquez, and Johann Grünenwald (B+V Arquitectos)

More information on the competition series can be found on Buildner’s official website here.