16 July 2013
Grand Designs Live, in conjunction with the National Self Build Association (NaSBA), has officially launched the new and pioneering ‘Self Build on a Shoestring’ design ideas competition.
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This unique competition is open to anyone and encourages people to design an innovative ‘self build friendly’ home that can be constructed for less than £50,000. The team behind the competition hopes to see entries that deliver a simple two bedroom home for less than this figure, with the overall winning design displayed at Grand Designs Live 2014.
Aspiring designers will need to showcase pioneering ideas and new concepts to prove that low cost homes can also be beautiful and sustainable too – with the chosen winners taking a share of the £5,000 prize fund.
The £50,000 build budget may seem tight; but it is possible to construct a home for this. For example, in Ireland: a compact three bedroom house – cost around £20,000 in materials and took just 50 days to construct.
Entrants now have until the end of September to submit their designs, with the winners being revealed at the Grand Designs Live exhibition at the Birmingham NEC show, from the 4 – 6 October 2013.
The competition was previewed as part of National Self Build Week 2013 – a campaign organised by the NaSBA and Grand Designs Live, and supported by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The judging panel will include Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud; Charlie Luxton, one of the presenters of the BBC’s Culture Show programme; Ted Stevens, current chair of the National Self Build Association; George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol and past-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Geoff Stow, self-home-builder and director of the Association for Environment Conscious Building.
Kevin McCloud said: “Self build doesn’t just happen on television. Every year about ten thousand of us commission a new home for ourselves or even build it with our bare hands. The National Self Build Association is dedicated to making that easier, cheaper and more accessible. Which is why we’re launching a competition to design a ‘Budget Self Build’. We’re looking for designs for simple-to-build kit homes that can be adapted to suit any need and reconfigured and skinned to fit anywhere. This competition will appeal to all those brilliant architects, amateurs, building companies and kit home firms who believe that the future in housing is self build.”
Housing Minister Mark Prisk said: “All too often the perception is that building your own home is a pipe dream, but self build is not just about Grand Designs: many innovatively-designed, well-built homes have been built by their owners on a very limited budget. The ‘Self Build on a Shoestring’ competition will help demonstrate the best ideas out there, which can be built for less than £50,000. I would urge as many people as possible to give this a go, and see for themselves how achievable building your own home can really be.”
NaSBA Chair Ted Stevens said: “The potential market for the winning design could be enormous. A recent Ipsos MORI poll suggested there are six million people currently investigating the feasibility of undertaking a self build project, and one million of these are already searching for or trying to acquire a plot of land.
“In the 1970’s and 1980’s the UK devised some extremely innovative, low cost self build homes, and hundreds of very affordable, simple-to-build homes were constructed. More recently there has been huge media interest in a very simple low cost 2/3 bedroom house constructed in Ireland for just £20,000. We believe there is a huge appetite in Britain, especially from young families on modest incomes, to build a truly affordable home for themselves. And we are confident we will get some wonderfully innovative designs – from both amateurs and professionals alike.”
The comepetition brief is available on the Self Build on a Shoestring page of the NaSBA website.
