A proposal reusing decommissioned buses as mobile playgrounds wins the 2026 Davidson Prize

A proposal to repurpose London's decommissioned New Routemaster buses into movable playgrounds has won this year’s Davidson Prize. 

Called PLAYDECK, the winning project was conceived by R.U.A Studio, an interdisciplinary team comprising architects Ru Quan Phuah and Shaun Thomas, landscape architect and videographer Esther Yik Chi Chan, landscape architect and writer Carmen Du, and Jessica Huynh, all of WW+P Architects. They were joined by landscape architect Kelci Vittachi of Studio Egret West and clinical psychologist and consultant Dr. Owen Walker. The team was unveiled as the winner and awarded £10,000 ($13,400) at a ceremony during the London Festival of Architecture.

This year’s theme was Changing the Game: Building Play into Housing, which invited multidisciplinary teams, including at least one registered architect, to rethink how play can be embedded into the design of the home and wider domestic environments. PLAYDECK responded by proposing to repurpose London's 1,000 New Rout...