Urban population in our major cities is rapidly growing, increasing the demand for dwellings and thus, the prices. This will likely lead to the “urbanization” of the suburbs, where many people will be willing to move to get affordable housing, areas with suboptimal outdoor air quality. Apart from that there is a need of designing new houses and redesigning existing ones in a new way to meet the demand of different type of users, to comply with the necessity for comfortable, sustainable and resilient buildings and not least, to provide the users with quality of life and enhanced wellbeing.

Reducing the environmental impact buildings have on our planet is a well-recognized issue among both practitioners and researchers. It has a large influence on the way buildings are designed today and will certainly continue to inform future developments in efforts to mitigate climate change. An equally important issue lies in understanding how buildings affect people’s health and wellbeing.

With this design competition we want to stimulate the minds of young and future building designers and engineers to identify innovative solutions that help create good indoor air quality, adequate thermal comfort and stimulating light and acoustic environments in dwellings also taking into account energy efficiency and e.g. climate resilience.