Multidisciplinary team RUA Studio has won this year's Davidson Prize with Playdeck, a concept design that envisions repurposing decommissioned buses into playscapes for people of all ages.

The proposal takes London's decommissioned New Routemaster buses, which will be phased out by 2030, and transforms them into mobile playgrounds to help encourage play in residential neighbourhoods.

It was designed by RUA Studio, which is a studio comprising WW+P architects Ru Quan Phuah and Shaun Thomas, WW+P landscape architects Esther Yik Chi Chan, Carmen Du and Jessica Huynh, Studio Egret West landscape architect Kelci Vittachi and clinical psychologist Owen Walker.

The Davidson Prize, an annual design competition focused on the concept of the home, was launched in 2021 in memory of architectural visualiser Alan Davidson.

In RUA Studio's winning design, buses are fitted with multifunctional play blocks and puzzle pieces for climbing, making music and creating spaces to gather.

When the bus is parked at its designated residential area, visitors can disassemble the blocks to create playscapes inside and outside the bus.

"We were most impressed by RUA Studio's ability to integrate expertise from the fields of architecture, landscape design and psychology into Playdeck," said this year's jury chair, DSDHA
architect Deborah Saunt.

"Equally, their proposal to repurpose a decommissioned London double-decker bus addresses the principles of the circular economy, while their management strategy tackles the unequal provision of play spaces across the city," she continued.

"The judges felt that the winning design has strong potential to create a lasting impact beyond the immediate area, not despite, but because of the temporary and travelling events that Playdeck facilitates."

RUA Studio designed Playdeck in response to the Davidson Prize brief, titled Changing the Game: Building Play into Housing, which tackled how play for all ages can be incorporated into domestic environments.

The team was one of three finalists selected from a 12-strong shortlist. One of the runner-up designs involved promoting play by deprioritising car traffic, designed by Artform, CW Studio, Made It Together and Civic and Social.

The other finalist team was made up of Barr Gazetas, Trigon Fire Safety, Adam Nathaniel Furman, ToyLikeMe, who suggested transforming an underused staircase in a 12-storey building into a space for play.

Free to enter, the Davidson Prize awarded each of the three finalists £5,000 to develop their proposals, and RUA Studio was awarded an additional £10,000 for its winning design.

A People's Choice Award was given to a design that aims to introduce climate-resilient playscapes to post-war housing estates, designed by a team made up of BPTW, Farrer Huxley, Julie Futcher, Arup and Play Disrupt.

Past winners of the prize include Studio Saar in 2024 for a design to turn the UK's vacant retail spaces into housing, and Studio Mutt in 2023, which proposed a concept for independent living facilities in Liverpool.

The images are by RUA Studio.