Entries open for House of No Waste Competition
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The House of No Waste Competition (HØW) calls upon aspiring young architects, landscape architects, building and structural engineers, planners, builders, material and environmental scientists, product designers, and built environment professionals to engage in a global competition that tackles pressing issues of the circular economy, Resource Nexus and waste management in the built environment.
The HØW Competition aims to generate creative, forward-thinking solutions that rethink how they design, construct, and manage buildings and cities with minimal negative environmental impact.
The focus areas include reducing waste, closing resource loops, and integrating innovative systems that support sustainability across all stages of a building's lifecycle. Concepts should align with the HØW Criteria and focus on reducing waste, closing resource loops, and integrating innovative systems that support sustainability across all stages of a building's lifecycle.
A total prize fund of 30,000 euros has been allocated, with 24,000 euros awarded as three main prizes of 8,000 euros each, and 6,000 euros distributed across three acknowledgement prizes of 2,000 euros each.
Admission is open worldwide, with the only restriction being that authors must be no older than 40 years at the opening of the competition, with a date of birth later than August 31, 1984. An authorized project contact must be nominated to act as the sole point of contact for each submission.
Eligible projects may include real, existing, possibly commissioned tasks, self-initiatives of the authors, academic work, or tasks from other competition procedures. While preference will be given to projects with potential for realization, groundbreaking innovative ideas are also welcome. The competition seeks “projects in the pipeline” that are not yet realized in relation to construction, mass application in methods, products, or production processes. Participants are free to define a site, context, or target user group, as long as the design maintains scalability, availability across economic levels, and accessibility to diverse communities and varying climate zones.
Submissions must include project details, information on the author or authors, and the nominated contact person. Each entry should provide a project summary of up to 2000 characters, along with three statements responding to the HØW Criteria in texts of up to 2000, 1000, and 1000 characters respectively. Entrants are required to upload between three and eleven project images, including two key visuals and one image of the author or team. Permitted formats include JPG, PNG, TIFF, or PDF, with a maximum resolution of 9000 x 6750 pixels. Captions for each image are mandatory, and file size must not exceed 5 MB.
The competition will host online webinars on September 8, 2025, and September 22, 2025. The final submission deadline is December 1, 2025, at 2:00 pm CET.
