Intentional Spaces Design Challenge

Envision a place where people of different ages and abilities can connect, participate, find support, and experience belonging.

Each proposal must respond to a clearly defined community, site, and geographic context. Rather than prescribing a particular building type or program, the Challenge asks teams to consider what health and wellbeing mean in that community and how design can support them.

“Place” encompasses the full experience of an environment: its architecture, interiors, urban design, landscape, sensory qualities, social and cultural meaning, and relationship to the surrounding community.

We welcome ambitious, imaginative ideas grounded in evidence and attentive to the practical conditions that would shape their realization. Proposals should consider accessibility, inclusion, environmental responsibility, and the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces.

How does what we know inform what we create?

The Challenge emphasizes evidence-informed neuroaesthetic and neurospatial design, drawing on research and knowledge about how environments influence human experience, health, and wellbeing.

Teams will demonstrate how scientific research, community knowledge, lived experience, and other credible sources shape specific spatial decisions. Relevant evidence may address experiential, behavioral, physiological, neurological, social, or environmental dimensions of human experience.

Proposals should make clear connections between the evidence informing design decisions, the experiences those decisions are intended to support, and anticipated health and wellbeing outcomes.

Teams will also describe how they would evaluate those outcomes if the place were built, identifying meaningful indicators of success and considering how findings could inform future adaptations.

The aim is to generate original ideas and learning that can inform design in other settings while respecting differences among communities, cultures, and places.

The Challenge welcomes interdisciplinary teams from around the world.

Each team must include at least three named members, with at least one member representing each of these areas:

• Design and spatial practice: Architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, urban design, engineering, or a related field.
• Health and human sciences: Public health, epidemiology, clinical or allied health practice, neuroscience, environmental health, or a related field.
• Community and lived expertise: A representative of the community for which the place is designed, bringing relevant community knowledge or lived experience.

Teams are expected to demonstrate meaningful collaboration across these areas, including authentic engagement with the community for which the place is envisioned.

Additional collaborators may bring perspectives from the arts, education, development, policy, and other relevant fields.

Students and interns may participate as team members. There is no separate student track.

All proposals must be new and created specifically for the Challenge. Previously completed projects and proposals substantially developed before the Challenge are not eligible.

The Challenge uses a single-stage submission process. Teams will submit:

• A project abstract of 150–200 words.
• A project narrative of 1,200–1,500 words responding to five questions.
• A maximum of two A1 landscape design boards, submitted as one PDF.
• Evidence references and a brief self-evaluation of two or three key evidence-to-design claims.
• An indicative preliminary project budget.
• Team information and required declarations.

The design boards must include an evidence-to-design diagram connecting evidence or knowledge to spatial decisions, intended experiences, and anticipated outcomes, as well as an illustrated sequence showing how people might experience the place over time.

The project narrative will address community and context, design intent, evidence-informed decisions, anticipated outcomes and evaluation, and considerations for realizing and adapting the proposed idea.

Download the full Challenge guidelines (PDF)

Three award recipients will be recognized, including a first-place winner receiving a $50,000 cash award.

Award recipients will be announced at the Global Wellness Summit in London, UK, in November 2027. The first-place recipient will also be invited to participate in a Global Wellness Institute real estate event in May 2028.

With teams’ permission and appropriate credit, submissions will be listed and categorized on the Challenge website, making the ideas accessible to designers, developers, community leaders, and others. Additional opportunities to share participants’ ideas will be explored.

Additional details about awards, recognition, and participation opportunities are provided in the Challenge guidelines.

• November 10–13, 2026: Challenge announced at the Global Wellness Summit; registration for updates opens.
• February 1, 2027: Submissions open.
• Early 2027: Participant webinar and Q&A.
• June 1, 2027: Submission deadline.
• August–September 2027: Jury review.
• November 2027: Three award recipients announced at the Global Wellness Summit in London, UK.

The Intentional Spaces Design Challenge is an ideas competition intended to inspire innovative, evidence-informed approaches to designing places that support human health and wellbeing.

There is no commitment to build a winning proposal, and an award does not constitute a commission or transfer of intellectual property. Any future development, research, piloting, or implementation would require a separate agreement with the team and relevant partners.

Full details about intellectual property, submission use, and recognition are provided in the Challenge guidelines.