European Collective Housing Award 2026

Competition Brief

The European Collective Housing Award is an international biennial recognition programme co-founded by the Basque Country Architecture Institute (San Sebastián) and arc en rêve centre d’architecture (Bordeaux), with the support of the Basque Government’s Department of Territorial Planning, Housing and Transport. The second edition launched in early 2026 with a submission window running from January to March 2026. The award recognises outstanding collective housing projects across Europe in two categories: best new construction and best renovation.

The award is honorary in nature. There are no cash prizes. Winning and finalist projects are exhibited at both the Basque Country Architecture Institute and arc en rêve, and selected works enter a living archive and reference corpus on European collective housing. The inaugural 2024 edition attracted 171 entries from 19 European countries, with 18 finalists and two category winners announced by a jury chaired by Anne Lacaton.

Intent

The award aims to generate critical debate about housing, the right to quality domestic and everyday architecture, and the value of European-style collective housing as a tool for urban revitalisation, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability. It frames collective housing not merely as a building typology but as a defining European cultural and civic value, with particular emphasis on the social responsibilities of architects, developers, public administrations, and construction companies. Evaluation focuses on how each project enriches shared concepts of housing by offering new perspectives on contemporary challenges, pursuing a holistic and humanistic vision of architecture that extends beyond the physical limits of the building.

Purpose

The award builds a growing exhibition programme and reference archive across its editions. Both the winning and finalist projects from each edition are exhibited at the Basque Country Architecture Institute in San Sebastián and at arc en rêve in Bordeaux, and up to thirty additional submissions are selected for inclusion in the exhibition and related publications. The second edition shortlist will be announced in summer 2026 and the final winner in autumn 2026.

Categories

The award is conferred in two categories: Best Collective Housing Development of New Construction and Best Collective Housing Development Resulting from Renovation. Projects must include at least three dwellings in a single-unit development and must be located in one of the 46 countries of the Council of Europe. For the second edition, eligible projects are those completed between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2023.

Requirements

Submissions may be made by public administrations, development companies, the architects of the project, construction companies, or users of the development. Each submission requires: a description of the development of no more than 500 words explaining its challenges, aims, and contribution to collective housing culture; full technical specifications including project name, location, completion date, authors, collaborators, owner/developer, construction company, total budget in euros, cost per m2, built surface, and photographer credits; a collection of up to ten photographs in JPG or PNG format with a minimum resolution of 2,000 pixels on the longer side and a maximum 3MB per file; and a comprehensive set of project drawings in PDF format with total documentation not exceeding 20MB. All materials are submitted via an online form at europeancollectivehousingaward.eu.

Jury

The jury for the second edition is chaired by Carme Pinós, recipient of Spain’s National Architecture Prize in 2021 and professor at institutions including the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Columbia University, and Harvard University. The full jury for 2026 consists of five members:

1. Carme Pinós (Chair) – Architect and professor, Barcelona, Spain. Works include the CaixaForum Zaragoza, the Vienna University of Economics and Business faculty building, and the Plaça de la Garduña complex in Barcelona.
2. Jing Liu – Architect, co-founder of SO-IL, New York and Amsterdam. Known for residential projects in Brooklyn and institutional works internationally.
3. Catherine Sabbah – Executive Director, IDHEAL (Institute for Research and Action in Housing), Paris. Former journalist at Les Échos; curator of Hôtel Métropole at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in 2019.
4. David Madden – Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and the Cities Programme, London School of Economics. Co-author of In Defence of Housing (2018) with Peter Marcuse.
5. Lucia Tozzi – Urban researcher and journalist, Milan. Known for critical analysis of gentrification, tourism-driven development, and the commodification of public space.

Registration Fees

Submission is free of charge. The award is organised by two institutional bodies with public sector backing and carries no entry fees.

Prizes and Rewards

There are no cash prizes at any level. The award is entirely honorary. Special mentions may be awarded at the jury’s discretion, as occurred in the 2024 edition for Phase 2 of Park Hill (Sheffield) and Ekko (Bordeaux).

Key Dates

Exact submission deadline dates for the second edition have not been published at the time of writing. The 2024 edition submission deadline was 7 May 2024. Interested parties should monitor europeancollectivehousingaward.eu for updated dates.

✦ ArchUp Competition Review

The European Collective Housing Award is one of the most credibly positioned recognition programmes in contemporary European architecture. Its institutional backing from two established architecture centres in San Sebastián and Bordeaux, its public sector support from the Basque Government, and a jury construction that combines practicing architects, sociologists, journalists, and urban researchers give it a breadth of critical perspective that distinguishes it from more narrowly professional awards. The decision to chair the second edition jury with Carme Pinós, following Anne Lacaton in the first, signals a sustained commitment to jurors of genuine international standing. The inclusion of David Madden and Lucia Tozzi is particularly notable: both bring explicitly political and sociological frameworks to housing evaluation that are rarely represented on architecture award juries, pushing the criteria beyond formal or technical assessment toward questions of social impact, rent pressure, and community rights. The free entry and Council of Europe-wide eligibility maximise accessibility. The absence of cash prizes is consistent with the award’s framing as an institutional recognition programme rather than a competition, and the exhibition and archive component give selected works sustained visibility across two cities over multiple years. For practices working in collective housing renovation or new construction with a demonstrable social and environmental dimension, this is among the most meaningful European recognitions available.

Final Thoughts

The European Collective Housing Award 2026 is a free, institutionally rigorous biennial recognition programme for the best collective housing renovation and new construction projects across 46 European countries, with a jury chaired by Carme Pinós and including voices from sociology, journalism, and urban research alongside architectural practice. Submission is open January to March 2026 via europeancollectivehousingaward.eu. Contact info@europeancollectivehousingaward.eu for enquiries.

Registration Deadline

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