Study Architecture 
ProPEL Registration Deadline: April 8, 2026
2026 Timber Competition
TIMBER IN THE CITY 6: Urban Habitats Competition
Introduction
Attainable Housing
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and Think Wood are pleased to announce TIMBER IN THE CITY 6: Urban Habitats Competition for the 2025-2026 academic year. The program is intended to challenge students, working individually or in teams, to reimagine the boundaries of wood construction in the urban environment, leading to the transformation of our existing cities through constructing sustainable buildings made from renewable resources, offering expedient affordable construction, innovating with new and traditional wood materials, and designing healthy living and working environments. Now in its sixth cycle, the series continues to push the urban potential of wood—this year by tackling the “missing-middle” gap between single-family dwellings and high-rise apartments. Entrants will deploy innovative, highly replicable wood-based systems on a real, under-utilized urban site to deliver attainable, human-scaled housing that strengthens community resilience and climate stewardship.
This year’s competition will focus on 3 prize levels:
Small Buildingunder 1,000 sq ft | Medium Buildingup to 10,000 sq ft | Large Buildingup to 20,000 sq ft |
The Challenge
This competition challenges students to design attainable housing—inclusive, sustainable, and thoughtfully designed dwellings that meet the needs of the urban middle class. Attainable housing is an understanding that well designed spaces are for all people. Entrants should integrate site conditions, building scales, material strategies, and programmatic elements to develop visionary yet practical solutions that rethink how we live in cities today. A successful submission should develop a prototype (or set of prototypes) that:
- Bridges the scale gap—offer missing-middle typologies such as ADUs, duplexes, four-plexes, courtyard clusters, flex-live/work units, small walk-ups, and neighborhood infill up to 20 000 ft².
- Leverages advanced wood technologies—incorporate mass timber components, panelized light-frame assemblies, and digitally-fabricated elements produced offsite.
- Demonstrates affordability, constructability, and carbon responsibility—lower embodied carbon, streamline on-site labor, enable rapid erection, and ensure long-term operational efficiency.
- Raises project value—by delivering universal design, healthy biophilic materials, abundant daylight and ventilation, and generous shared indoor-outdoor spaces.
- Responds to context—integrates with existing fabric, respects neighborhood scale, and activates the public realm
Together, these goals ask proponents to reimagine wood as both a structural system and a civic catalyst—one that lowers embodied carbon, raises design quality and occupant well-being, while building stronger, more inclusive communities. By meeting the brief, entrants will demonstrate how wood can deliver attainable, climate-positive housing that cities everywhere can replicate.
Wood
The competition challenges participants to interpret, invent, and deploy numerous methods of building systems, with a focus on innovations in wood design on a real site. Wood, including modern mass timber systems and panelized light-frame assemblies, combine carbon storage, low embodied energy, speed of construction, and warm biophilic interiors. Submissions should leverage:
- Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), Glulam, Nail Laminated Timber (NLT), or Dowel Laminated Timber (DLT) for primary structure.
- Panelized light-frame walls and/or floors for rapid closed-wall delivery.
- Digital fabrication (CNC, robotic milling) and offsite prefabrication for precision, efficiency, and waste reduction.
Wood is a natural, renewable, and sustainable material for building, with less environmental impact than other structural materials. Wood stores carbon and, with the least embodied energy of all major building materials, it requires less energy from the raw material extraction, transportation to the manufacturing facility, and production. Moreover, harvesting and replanting increases forests’ carbon sink potential as the rate of sequestration is greater during young, vigorous growth. Active forest management or forest thinning mitigates wildfires, cuts carbon emissions, replenishes area waterways, expands wildlife habitat, and creates jobs in rural areas.
Eligibility
Because the support of Think Wood is derived from companies whose markets are mainly in the U.S., the Timber in the City Student Competition is open to students and/or student teams from ACSA Full and Candidate Member Schools, as well as ACSA Affiliate Members Schools from the U.S. and Canada. Students may work individually or in teams and must work with a faculty sponsor on the submission.
Faculty who teaches at an ACSA member school are required to enroll students by completing an online registration form prior to registration by April 8, 2026. All student entrants are required to work under the direction of a faculty sponsor. Entries will be accepted for individuals as well as teams. Teams must be limited to a maximum of five students. Submissions should be principally the product of work in a design studio or related class.
Awards
Winning students and their faculty sponsors will receive cash prizes totaling $40,000. The design jury will meet in the summer of 2026 to select winning projects and honorable mentions. Winners and their faculty sponsors will be notified of the competition results directly. A list of winning projects will be posted on the ACSA website (www.acsa-arch.org).
$40,000
in cash prizes
Small Building
Student | Faculty | |
1st Prize | $6,500 | $2,000 |
2nd Prize | $3,500 | $1,000 |
Medium Building
Student | Faculty | |
1st Prize | $6,500 | $2,000 |
2nd Prize | $3,500 | $1,000 |
Large Building
Student | Faculty | |
1st Prize | $6,500 | $2,000 |
2nd Prize | $3,500 | $1,000 |
* With an additional $1,000 for honorable mentions to be determined by the jury.
Criteria for Judging
Criteria for the judging of submissions will include: softwood lumber as the primary structural material, creative and innovative use of wood in the design solution, successful response of the design to its surrounding context, the creative and clear approaches to designing a healthy urban mixed-use environment with wood as a central material, successful response to basic architectural concepts such as human activity needs, commitment to meeting the needs of underserved communities, structural integrity, and coherence of architectural vocabulary.
The Jury will judge each student design proposal based on of the following criteria:
- The quality of the architectural concept and the rigor with which it is developed; Its technical sophistication, resolution, structural feasibility, and use of softwood lumber (e.g. dimensional lumber, heavy timber, mass timber, etc.).
- The effectiveness of its visualization and representation through a variety of material, graphic, and digital media, those prescribed within each studio section as well as other techniques that students may employ to supplement and substantiate their presentations.
- The breadth of design consideration with respect to the environmental and social implications and impacts of the building proposed and the way in which those concerns are quantified and visualized.
- A successful sustainability and lower carbon building performance.
Supporting Learning Objectives
- Explore structured collaborative work among students and faculty in addition to individual proposals.
- Incorporation of outside community of specialists into discovery and learning process.
- Identify and experiment with specific tools for integrated thinking and making.
- Create and follow a structured workflow for innovation and iteration.
- Specific emphasis on evidence of physical modeling, making, and mock‐
- Distill key findings into a compelling discovery and proposal that has a conceptual and physical imperative and is fully described.
Image Credit: 2024 Timber in the City Competition 2nd Place
Project Title: Local Timber
Student: Jarren Amaro
Faculty Sponsor: Peter Raab
Institution: Texas Tech University
Sponsor
Administrator
Questions
Edwin Hernández-Ventura
Programs Coordinator
ehernandez@acsa-arch.org
202.785.2324
Eric W. Ellis
Senior Director of Operations and Programs
eellis@acsa-arch.org
202-785-2324
