“Town Centre Living” Architectural Design Competitions launched by Minister O’Brien and RIAI

The RIAI is delighted to partner with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to run the Town Centre Living competitions. The competitions seek to identify and promote innovative design solutions for housing within town centres to encourage town-centre living. The competitions align with the Government’s Housing For All and Town Centre First policies.

Following an open invitation to, and close liaison with Local Authorities, the DHLGH has selected four town centre sites in Castleblayney, Kildare, Roscrea and Sligo.

On behalf of the DHLGH, the RIAI is running four separate competitions for these towns concurrently. It is intended that the winning practices will be awarded the design commission and that the selected sites would be progressed as real social housing projects by the various local authorities, who will appoint the winning design team, to progress through the pre-construction process to construction and delivery, funded by DHLGH.

Prior to registration, it is recommended to read the Competition Regulations and the individual Competition Packs for each site. These can be downloaded from the RIAI website - just click on the link.

The competition is intended to generate design innovation in town centre housing. In order to promote diversity in the response and award of contacts, each entrant (i.e. Architect/Practice) may submit entries for a maximum of any two of the four competition sites.