The brief provided the potential for us to explore ideas that we believe in very strongly. We've also, as architects, designed the first steel frame modular apartment building built in the UK, called Murray Grove, for Peabody Trust, which went on to win many awards. So we felt we've got quite a lot of experience working in an innovative way with steel in housing.

As well, the delivery of affordable housing is one of the most important social issues in the UK at the moment. But this issue is a global issue and almost every country that we investigate is facing housing problems. With skill shortages around the world, how do you square the circle of getting good quality affordable housing where it's needed in the right quantity and the right quality? It is a very important social issue that we feel as architects we should be leading on and helping society address.

What is Carwright Pickard's design approach and philosophy?

As a practice, we have probably an international reputation now for innovation in housing and particularly with modern methods of construction and the use of prefabrication. We are particularly interested in how to make innovative buildings, and if you can take construction off the building site into the factory, we believe it's a better way of delivering homes. Our key philosophy is the way we approach housing design using steel, recognising that you don't want what I call "potato-stamp architecture"--monotony, repetition and sheer quantity--for the sake of affordable housing. What is needed is a very flexible kit of parts developed from standardized components, from which you can create a very wide variety and choice in housing. The components themselves can be manufactured in a very efficient way, with the cost of those parts understood, and (thereby) using factory production techniques, you can bring the cost down and the quality up. We want our buildings to be beautiful and create beautiful environments, but we also recognize that you've got to build to a good quality. Which is why we feel using steel is an opportunity to take the building site into the factory, and also a way of attacking the price problems.

Steel is a very accurate material to work with and allows you to prefabricate components, which means you can do a lot in the factory. Whereas working with other materials, although you can prefabricate using some of those materials, it's less accurate. There are more issues with movement, thermal movement, and steel lends itself very well to factory production. If you have a successful prefabricated approach, then you reduce your time on site. We did a steel frame modular apartment block where we halved the time on site compared to traditional construction. If you are on site for the half the time, then there are huge savings. And, if it's high quality construction that has been done in the factory, there are fewer defects later, which often cause problems on projects. The main issue is that if you are doing a one-off small project, you're not going to see the savings quite as much as if you have a flow of regular projects. So what we would need to do is work closely with the developer and the supply chain.

We're extremely excited. We took (our entry) very seriously and put a lot of resources into it. When you take something very seriously, then naturally it's important that you win. What the steel industry has done is what a lot of other sectors need to do because the innovation that could happen is not happening industry wide. It's a fantastic thing that the global steel industry is actually putting their money down to help innovation in an important area such as affordable housing.

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