THE RUINS TO REUSE 2026
Choose an existing building anywhere in the world — in use, abandoned or forgotten — and give it a reason to stand.
- Entry fee
- £25
- Prize
- £500
- Winners
- 1
- Runners-up
- 10
- Deadline
- 30 November 2026
- Results
- 15 January 2027
The brief
Most of the buildings we will use in 2050 are already standing. Many of them are empty. The Ruins to Reuse asks you to choose one existing structure anywhere in the world and give it a new purpose.
The site is yours to pick. A disused shopfront, a farm outbuilding, a stripped-out chapel, a corner of a car park deck, a ruin with nothing left but its walls. The only constraint is scale: work within roughly 750 square metres of floor area so every entry is judged against comparable ambition.
There are no restrictions on programme. Housing, workshop, library, bathhouse, canteen, clinic, studio — propose whatever the building and its neighbourhood actually need. What matters is that the new use is specific to the place, and that the existing fabric is doing real work rather than acting as a backdrop.
This is an ideas competition. We are not asking for a planning submission. We are asking for a proposal resolved far enough that a reader can believe it: what stays, what goes, what is added, how it is built, and why it deserves to exist.
Judging criteria
Every competition is judged independently and in-house by Design Something. Submissions are scored anonymously against the published criteria and their weightings, and the scores are aggregated to produce the ranking.
25%
Relevance to brief
How directly the proposal reuses an existing structure and answers the brief as written.
25%
Design resolution
Plan, section, structure and material decisions that hold together as a buildable piece of architecture.
20%
Originality
A genuinely new position on the building, not a default conversion.
15%
Feasibility
Realism about structure, cost, phasing, retained fabric and end of life.
15%
Presentation
Clarity of drawings, images and written rationale across the A3 pages.
Submission requirements
- —One PDF file at A3 page size (297 × 420mm), portrait or landscape, as many pages as you need. Maximum 20MB. Every page is read as presentation.
- —The existing building shown honestly: photographs or survey drawings of what is there now.
- —A context plan locating the site and explaining its neighbourhood.
- —Primary plans, at least one long section, and the elevations that changed.
- —A drawing that separates retained fabric from new construction.
- —One or more images of the transformed space from a viewpoint someone would actually stand in.
- —A written rationale of no more than 500 words covering use, structure and impact.
- —No names, studio marks or logos anywhere in the document. Judging is anonymous.
Rules
- 01Open to everyone. No qualifications required. Teams of up to four people, entered once.
- 02The entry fee is £25 per submission, taken at submission and non-refundable.
- 03Work must be your own and must not have been built or previously published as a completed project.
- 04You may edit and re-upload your submission at any time until the deadline.
- 05Submissions containing identifying information may be disqualified without refund.
- 06You choose whether your work is displayed publicly in the archive.
Full terms and conditions and privacy policy apply.
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