The HOME Competition 2019

“Every house, every product of architecture... should be a fruit of our endeavor to build an earthly paradise for people.” – Alvar Aalto
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The Home remains the most significant architectural place we experience throughout our lives. Home represents safety, ownership, privacy, and stability. Home is where we can be alone and with people we care about most. Historically, the home has been a place of permanence. Despite how chaotic our lives are, we cherish the consistency of sleeping in the same bed and performing the same daily rituals here. Yet, new trends in digitalization and globalization continue to reshape realms of everyday life and alter our physical environments, including our homes. It is important to examine how we adapt our living spaces to these shifts.

Through the ages, architects have continuously investigated the role that homes play in our lives. These investigations present us with new notions of home environments that are sometimes wholistic, like Peter Eisenman’s House VI or Le Corbusier’s Unité d'Habitation, and sometimes specific, like the elevator in OMA’s Maison Bordeaux.

The HOME competition invites all designers to explore ideas of domestic architecture for the future. Designers may consider the impacts of global population shifts, proximity of major cities to coastlines, new materials and building techniques, as well as the rise of co-housing, tiny homes, smart houses and marketplaces like Airbnb. HOME creates a platform to speculate the ways new technological, political, environmental and cultural changes can redefine the spaces where we live.

What do you believe will be the future of home?

Submissions may propose a single family home, a multifamily building, an adaptable structure, temporary living experience, or a home that takes the shape of any model or scale. All submissions should clearly define how a resident or residents interact with the proposed living space through graphic representation, text summary, or both.

Designers may propose any geographical location for their home design but should consider the relationship between their proposal and its site, taking into account the inherent benefits, drawbacks, and unique characteristics. Additionally, designers can propose homes with no defined site.