Mole group-build housing concept wins £20k William Sutton Prize

Mole – which proposed a zero-carbon community homebuilding system – was up against a mixed-tenure Garden City-style housing concept drawn up by Greenspace Architects and a community green hub toolkit devised by Optimised Environments in the contest for the William Sutton Prize for Sustainability and Placemaking. Optimised Environments received a £5,000 highly commended prize.

Mole’s Home Made system is designed to support the development of group-build community housing. It sets out a step-by-step approach from land purchase to completed building, facilitating community-led housing and tackling associated barriers with the aim of enabling greater numbers of people to come together to build their own homes.

Mole hopes to use the £20,000 prize fund to contribute towards the development of an illustrated document and website, forming a toolkit that sets out the approach to engage landowners, local authorities, politicians, and future residents. It will also help fund initial design work on a modular housing system, comprising a building system and engagement model.

The competition, now in its fourth year, sought ‘groundbreaking’ proposals that could make a positive social impact on an existing community. It was open to English organisations and all UK individuals aged over 18.

Its two awards – the William Sutton Prize for Social Innovation and the newly rebranded William Sutton Prize for Sustainability and Placemaking – are named after Clarion Housing Group’s founder, a Victorian entrepreneur who bequeathed his fortune to providing public housing. Each offers a £20,000 top prize.

Last year’s prize for placemaking and affordable housing design was won by AJ 40 under 40 star and emerging practice Surman Weston, whose Hackney School of Food created a ‘seed-to-spoon’ food education hub for primary school children within an old building and area of disused land.

The 2019 award was won by AJ 40 under 40 practice Jas Bhalla Architects – founded by former KPF and Adjaye Associates employee Jas Bhalla in November 2017 – which received £20,000 for its proposal to transform nine main roads in outer London into dense, urban streets. Bhalla was one of the judges for this year’s prize.

Mole founding director Meredith Bowles said: ‘At Mole Architects, we’re committed to making this project happen no matter what, but winning the William Sutton Prize means that we can focus proper time and energy, which will give it a much greater chance of success.

‘We’d noticed the William Sutton Prize each year it’s happened, and have admired the ethos behind it as much as the fantastic schemes. It fits our aspirations as a practice perfectly and we’re excited to have the opportunity to trial our winning project on one of Clarion’s upcoming development sites.’

Clarion’s chief executive Clare Miller said: ‘I’m delighted that we will be supporting Mole Architects and Optimised Environments through the William Sutton Prize. Our winners are inspiring and innovative projects that have the potential to change lives, and that’s what the prize is all about.

‘Not only will the winning teams receive financial support, but we’ll also be working with them to offer guidance and expertise to help turn their bright ideas into reality. Mole Architects’ proposal will be trialled on a future development site and we’re excited to see how it can help support community-led housing at scale.’

Bhalla said: ‘It was an absolute pleasure judging this year’s William Sutton Prize for Sustainability and Placemaking. We were overwhelmed by the creativity and variety of the shortlist. Combining innovation with a focus on delivery, Mole Architects’ Home Made project was the standout entry.

‘The project builds upon the team’s growing expertise in group-build to explore ways of delivering new forms of community housing across the country. Given the importance of diversifying the types of new homes brought forward, Home Made offers an exciting proposition to create new housing focused on the specific needs of a particular community.’

Clarion Housing Group formed six years ago following a merger of Circle Housing Group and Affinity Sutton, which was founded after Sutton’s death in 1900. The housing association is today the largest in the UK, managing 125,000 homes across 170 local authorities.

Sutton was born in the City of London in 1833 and created Sutton Carriers, the country’s first door-to-door parcel service. He bequeathed his entire fortune to a range of charitable projects including providing much-needed public housing across the capital.

The two awards celebrate excellence in social entrepreneurship and social housing design. The first prize focuses on concepts, services or products intended to make a positive social impact on a community while the second focuses on delivering sustainable and successful communities, sustainable architecture and construction, energy efficiency and innovations in promoting biodiversity and green living.

The entries were judged by Bhalla; Miller; Alastair Mant, director of business transformation at the UK Green Building Council; Matthew Morgan, director of the Quality of Life Foundation; and Richard Cook, group development director of Clarion.

Hill Patru Architects – formerly known as Adrian Hill Architects – was shortlisted for The William Sutton Prize for Social Innovation for its Two Front Doors concept for intergenerational living. The overall winner was Pride of Place Living, a multigenerational, life-long and inclusive living concept for LGBTQ+ people in Leeds.

• SHORTLIST: The William Sutton Prize for Sustainability and Placemaking

[WINNER] Home Made
Mole Architects
A proposal for a zero-carbon homebuilding system supporting the development of group-build community housing. By setting out a step-by-step approach from land purchase to completed building, it will create a methodology for community-led group-build housing, that could lead to greater numbers of people being a part of this revolutionary movement.

[HIGHLY COMMENDED] The Community Green Hub Toolkit
Optimised Environments Ltd (OPEN)
A toolkit and model approach for providing a truly innovative community green hub for new and existing communities. It gathers various threads including Biodiversity Net Gain, rewilding, healthy spaces, active travel, outdoor spaces for social interaction and education relating to the natural world into an inspirational planning and design resource.

Sustainable Garden Communities
Greenspace Architects Ltd
A proof of concept research project exploring mixed-tenure housing using Garden City principles to create successful and sustainable communities by helping people live in their own homes for longer, regardless of age, income or ability.

My Place
London Development Trust
My Place is piloting an innovative approach to neighbourhood development that prioritises the needs of existing communities by commissioning young people to research and advocate for their local communities, connecting them to local decision-makers and encouraging young community leaders and local decision-makers to work together to co-create neighbourhood development.

Accessible public electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure
Connected Kerb
A project to demonstrate how affordable and accessible public electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure can be deployed to tackle EV inequality and drive greater EV adoption amongst communities traditionally under-represented in the EV transition.

YorSpace: a replicable housing model for affordability, sustainability and community
YorSpace CLT
YorSpace Community Land Trust has developed an innovative, scalable model for community-led development. This involves acquiring existing sites to create affordable zero-carbon housing and other community assets that are invested in, and managed by, local communities. Morrell House is a pilot project demonstrating the model’s applicability to the rental sector.

 

• SHORTLIST: The William Sutton Prize for Social Innovation

[WINNER] Pride of Place Living
Pride of Place Living
Pride of Place Living will provide multigenerational, life-long and inclusive living for LGBTQ+ people in Leeds, particularly those aged over 50. LGBTQ+ communities are disproportionately affected by homelessness, familial rejection and social isolation. Residents will live in a safe and supportive living environment with full acceptance and part of a multi-generational community.

[HIGHLY COMMENDED] Insightful allocations – understanding, applying and measuring new insights from the psychology of poverty
University of Birmingham
Utilise insights from the psychology of poverty to design an empathetic allocation process. The aim is to put the heart back into allocations, to build relationships with new tenants and staff that result in sustainable tenancies, designing impact measures and training to scale the approach.

Two Front Doors
Hill Patru Architects (formerly Adrian Hill Architects)
Two Front Doors is a concept for true intergenerational living in a high density urban scenario. Inspired by Transylvanian farmhouses, the innovation consists of pairing a smaller apartment with a larger one, forming a 'linked unit'. When desired, the apartments can share a room and a terrace but they have separate entrance doors, giving each of them a distinct presence. A nuclear family can live next door to an elderly couple, using the space in between for common activity. When required, the room in between can become an extra bedroom to either unit. Having won the Intergenerational Living – Housing for the Future competition (Enfield & MTVH, 2020), the aim is to develop the proposals, demonstrate how concepts can be implemented and take the project to a pilot scheme.

Agile Homes
Agile Property & Homes
A unique, rapid-response housing solution that enables the delivery of high quality, space-compliant, low-carbon, affordable homes. By unlocking land that's free and hidden in plain sight, Agile Homes can deliver truly affordable homes for social rent, shared ownership and open market sale.

The Growing Project
Grand Union CIO
To develop a business plan to create a regenerative urban farm project set in Sandwell, West Midlands.  The farm will house 10 work/live units and enable people who are currently vulnerably housed and whose needs are not met within the current supported housing system to work and live together.

Danger Zones Diagnostic Assessment Tool
Depaul UK
Depaul UK have co-produced a tool that empowers young people experiencing homelessness to describe their subjective experiences of temporary housing in a standardised way. They plan to develop this tool into an online platform to support frontline organisations to identify young people living in dangerous accommodation and protect them from harm.