The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is sponsoring a competition for teams of architects, developers and surveyors to design and build new suburban homes that are inspiring, yet affordable.

The Foundation hopes to build the winning entry for a development of about six homes in its ‘model’ village of New Earswick in York. But beyond that, it is looking for exciting and practical ideas for ‘Derwenthorpe’, a much larger mixed-income community of 540 homes being planned on the east side of the city.

Lord Richard Best, the JRF Director, explained that the challenge for the competing applicants would be to apply good design to relatively inexpensive, affordable homes. "Although British architects win international awards for major commercial and cultural buildings, residential architecture for the middle and lower housing market has been largely ignored," he said. "The Foundation can lay some claim to being a godparent of 'liveable' suburbs, since our village of New Earswick was a precursor to garden communities in Letchworth and Hampstead. We hope our competition can make a useful contribution to good suburban design at the start of a new century."

The competition aims to achieve a mix of houses and flats for sale and rent. The tenure of each home should not be apparent and the quality should not vary according to tenure. The 'design and build' format has been chosen deliberately to guard against pioneering designs for housing that prove to be unworkable in practice.

Teams are being invited to express their interest by the end of March. A selection of four finalists will be made in York on April 15th by an expert panel of judges, advised by Les Sparks, former Planning and Architecture Director for Birmingham and now a Commissioner at CABE (the Commission for the Built Environment). The four finalists will each receive an award of £10,000.