AR House 2023 winners revealed

Over the past 20 years, many owners of apartment buildings in Hong Kong have taken advantage of an overheated housing market and divided apartments into extremely small units, known as subdivided units (SDUs). Domat’s scheme of home modification for low-income families provides modular pieces of furniture to SDU residents and helps them live with dignity. The winning project was selected by Stephanie Davidson, co-founder of Davidson Rafailidis, Lina Ghotmeh, founder of Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture and Daniel Tudor Munteanu, founder and editor of the research project OfHouses.

Stephanie Davidson praised Domat’s way of working for being ‘noble, necessary and radical’, and their interventions ‘small but smart, with enormous impact’. She saw in the project ‘an interesting, contemporary and contextual extension of the Existenzminimum’.

Lina Ghotmeh thought Domat’s home modification scheme demonstrates ‘a close listening to daily postures’. It is both ‘a quick response to people’s needs’ and ‘a smart use of materials’. The modular furniture ‘cleverly articulates the spaces of the home: a way to make a lot with very little’.

Daniel Tudor Munteanu admitted that, although ‘architecture cannot heal a sick political and economic system’, the architect should go beyond the figure of the ‘public intellectual’ – who makes ‘correct systemic diagnoses’ – to become an activist. As Domat’s work shows, spatial practitioners can then ‘help to temporarily relieve chronic pain in the social body’.

The winner is joined by one highly commended project: housing for rubber workers in Chiapas, Mexico by Manuel Cervantes Estudio. Making legible the tension between transience and laying down roots, this intervention includes both temporary housing for single male workers as well as more permanent units for families.

Housing for rubber workers in Chiapas, Mexico by Manuel Cervantes Estudio

Credit: César Béjar

‘The project responds to a pressing need and shows the power of architecture in transforming people’s well-being,’ said Lina Ghotmeh, ‘despite the reasonable amount of idealism in the scheme that didn’t come to fruition’; and despite, as Daniel Tudor Munteanu added, the ‘difficulty in striking a balance between the contradictory expectations that surround temporary housing: providing privacy without being either too precarious or too permanent’. Impressed by Manuel Cervantes Estudio’s ‘straightforward and modest formal moves’, Stephanie Davidson also saw the project as a reminder that ‘housing needs are ever-changing’ and ‘preconceptions are inevitably exclusionary’.

Four additional projects were commended by the jury, including Terraced House in Japan by Atelier Luke. The judges enjoyed this ‘small, well‑crafted interior, where every detail matters to create the whole and, on a very restricted plot, space feels celebrated and expanded.’ They said: ‘There is a sense of intimacy, a drawn simplicity.’

Terraced House in Kyoto, by Atelier Luke

Credit: Yohei Sasakura

Also commended is Small House in the UK by MOCT Studio. Following a long lineage of miniature buildings that have been squeezed into leftover urban spaces, the judges commended this ‘very compact, inhabited sculpture, where the very tall external sliding panels feel like the single most impactful move, both in relation to the street and as a spatial emancipator for the interior’.

Small House in London, UK by MOCT Studio

Credit: Ioana Marinescu

The judges commended House 14a in Denmark by Pihlmann Architects for demonstrating ‘innovative thinking’, and said: ‘With interiors that look like exteriors, House 14a is both a provocation and a refreshing take on domesticity. The spatial expression and careful detailing are evidence of the architects’ joyful handling and adaptation of an existing structure.’

House 14a in Copenhagen, Denmark by Pihlmann Architects

Credit: Hampus Berndtson

The last project to be commended is Itu House in Brazil by RADDAR, ‘an essay in intelligent adaptive reuse’ according to the judging panel. ‘With its well-balanced programmatic mix, it is an attractive project that demonstrates that sustainability can be compatible with affordability.’

Itu House in São Paulo, Brazil by RADDAR

Credit: Maíra Acayaba