Community-led housing scheme wins 2025 Davidson Prize

A proposal to revive Plymouth’s Union Street through affordable housing and community-led regeneration has won the 2025 Davidson Prize. Titled 300 Homes within a Union Street Mile, the project was developed by an interdisciplinary team comprising Clifton Emery Design, Nudge Community Builders, Millfields Trust, Plymouth Energy Community, and Devon and Cornwall Planning Consultants. The team was awarded the £10,000 ($13,600 USD) prize during a ceremony at Heatherwick Studio’s Making House, as part of the London Festival of Architecture.

Responding to this year’s Davidson Prize theme Streets Ahead: The race to build 1.5m homes, the winning scheme envisions incremental transformation of vacant and underused buildings along the historic high street. It proposes the delivery of 300 modular, low-carbon homes using a flexible pattern book system based on a 600mm grid.

The project emphasises community empowerment, aiming to create resilient neighbourhoods through shared amenities, co-living arrangements, and a collaborative approach to development. By reactivating Union Street, the proposal seeks to serve as a scalable model for the regeneration of over 7,000 high streets across the UK, potentially improving housing access for the 10 million people living within 200 metres of these urban corridors.

“The judges were truly inspired by 300 Homes within a Union Street Mile," jury chair Pooja Agrawal said about the winning scheme. "We believe this proposal has the potential to be transformational. For too long, the sector has relied on and incentivised housebuilders as the primary solution to meeting ambitious housing targets. This proposal challenges that norm—demonstrating the need for more collaborative, grass-roots and innovative approaches that we believe are genuinely scalable."