Categories

Best Traditional Home
While most people claim that the only way to live in a house with period charm is to, put simply, buy an old house, many self-builders take on the cynics and create a new home that marries the very best in period house design styling with modern conveniences such as energy efficiency. This category looks for examples of new homes built in carefully detailed period style. Last year’s winner was a brand new Baronial-style country home in the Highlands which looked like it had been there for centuries.

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Best Contemporary House
This category aims to find the best one-off home self-built in a contemporary style — and is one of our hottest-fought fields. Last year’s winner was a truly spectacular cliff-edge home in Devon built for a family who had previously lived in old, period cottages — quite a change. Contemporary homes might incorporate lots of glass into their design, perhaps with render or cladding; they might have strong rooflines that could be flat or curved; but all our best contemporary homes have one thing in common — you just can’t ignore their design flair.

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Best Renovation
This category recognises projects that have improved an old home and brought it up to date using its original features as a template. Last year’s winner, which won our Overall award too, is the sensitive update of a 1970s Modernist classic.

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Best Extension/Remodel
More and more people are making structural changes – rather than simple refurbishments – to their homes through remodelling (knocking down and rearranging walls) and extending. Last year’s winner did both to great effect, turning a tired West London terrace into an open, smart, free-flowing family home.

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Best Conversion
Taking on an old building such as a barn, school, church or even a factory and turning it into a successful house is perhaps the most difficult of all domestic building projects. This category is for anyone who undertakes a conversion project. Last year’s winner was a former barn building in Nottinghamshire that had been sensitively extended and converted internally to create a light and characterful home that made the most of its original purpose.

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Best Ecological Home
All new homes built today have to meet stringent regulations that, by default, makes all self-builds ‘eco’ homes in comparison to their forebears. This category is designed to recognise self-built or renovated homes that have gone beyond the minimum and achieved exemplary energy-efficiency standards, mixed with an eye towards sustainability, in the context of an attractive design. Last year’s winner was a contemporary ICF (insulated concrete formwork) home.

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Award for Residential Design
Our Awards scheme was established to recognise the army of self-builders and renovators who take a step out of the mainstream property market to create something special. However, many architects contribute  beyond reasonable expectation to their clients’ projects and this category is designed to recognise a special one-off design. Last year’s winner was an astonishing mews remodelling scheme in Central London which dazzled the judges with triple-height spaces and sumptuous, contemporary interiors.

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Best Value for Money Project
Saving money may not be the main reason many people decide to build their own home, but for a committed minority, self-build achieves fantastic savings on what the same house would have cost to buy on the open market. In recognition of this, the Value for Money category aims to commend the self-builders who have achieved quite extraordinary savings, perhaps through embracing DIY — a bit like last year’s winners, who spent four years building this charming barnstyle home in Cambridgeshire at just a fraction of the full market value.

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Best Timber Frame
Whether it’s structural insulated panels (SIPs), conventional open panel timber frame or oak frame – as our picture of last year’s winner shows – this category recognises innovation and good design amongst the UK’s growing number of timber frame self-builders.

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