Design Competition

Re-imagining the Garden City

We have worked with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) on a design ideas competition called, ‘Re-Imagining the Garden City’.

This design ideas competition brief was to discover new design approaches for a modern garden city to meet the needs of the 21st century, whilst recapturing the pioneering spirit that led to the development of the world’s first garden city at Letchworth Garden City.  We hope that this will help shift the debate more towards place making as part of the discussion concerning major new housing development and new settlements.

Where is the land in question?

The Competition invited architect-led design teams to explore garden city living and place making to meet 21st century needs, using the 45 Hectare site to the north of the Grange Estate in Letchworth, as a case study.

Initial Responses to the design competition

The first phase of the Competition attracted 95 entries from competitors based in Australia; France; Germany; India; Iran; Italy; the Netherlands; Poland; Thailand; the United Kingdom and the United States of America.  Following appraisal of the anonymous design submissions, the authors of the four shortlisted teams (in alphabetical order of design team lead) were identified as follows:

  • EcoResponsive Environments
  • CF MØller Architects UK Ltd
  • Sarah Wigglesworth Architects
  • Stride Treglown

Winner announced

On 7th June 2019, The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation announced that EcoResponsive Environments was the winner of the Re-Imagining the Garden City Design Ideas Competition, with their Grange in the Hedges design.

Give your feedback

Whilst the winning design concept has now been selected, we're keen to receive ongoing feedback on the entries via the online form below each shortlisted design. The feedback surveys can be found by clicking on each of the images below. This will help inform our proposed development plans for the LG1 site which formed the case study for the competition.

If you would like to view all of the competition entries, please click on the this link to the RIBA competition website 

Our Design Competition Partners