Re-Enchanted City, a drawing by Chetwoods Chairman and founder Laurie Chetwood, has been selected as one of the winners of The Architecture Drawing Prize 2026. The drawing will be showcased at the World Architecture Festival in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from 18–20 November 2026, before being exhibited at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London in early 2027.

Established in 2017, The Architecture Drawing Prize is a collaboration between Make Architects, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the World Architecture Festival. The international competition celebrates architectural drawing as a powerful means of exploring, developing and communicating design ideas, attracting submissions from architects, designers and students around the world.

Exploring Re-Enchantment through architecture

Re-Enchanted City explores Re-Enchantment, a new creative movement founded by Laurie Chetwood that calls for architecture to be socially, ecologically and emotionally alive. It represents a cultural shift towards valuing continuity, meaning and care, and aims to create buildings and places that do not simply perform well, but inspire, resonate and belong.

Central to this philosophy is Circular Life, the methodology that brings Re-Enchantment to life through the creative reuse, adaptation and regeneration of existing buildings, materials and resources.

The drawing imagines an abandoned metropolis, made obsolete by the relentless pursuit of technological efficiency, being rediscovered and transformed by a new community. Echoing the reuse of Roman materials and sites in London after the collapse of Roman rule, it envisions a sustainable, self-sustaining settlement emerging from the fabric of the former city.

At its centre, a hydrogen fuel cell, surrounded by the first dwellings, anchors a spiral of development extending outwards through civic spaces to productive landscapes incorporating rainwater harvesting, food production and recreation.

Rather than replacing the past, the new community builds upon it, giving existing structures and resources renewed purpose. The drawing presents architecture not as a finished product, but as an evolving process of occupation, adaptation and renewal.

‍The vision also raises wider questions about the growing influence of artificial intelligence and technology on architectural design.

While AI offers significant opportunities to improve efficiency and support creativity, its capacity to generate and replicate designs at scale also risks reinforcing an increasingly standardised built environment. The ease with which repetitive, modular solutions can be reproduced challenges the role of architectural originality and the value of design rooted in a particular place.

Re-Enchantment offers an alternative to this tendency towards uniformity. It advocates a more bespoke, imaginative approach that responds to the culture, character and history of each location, creating variety, individuality and a stronger sense of belonging. Rather than allowing technology or mass production to dictate architectural outcomes, it places human creativity, local identity and the experience of place at the centre of design.

The imagined city's transformation also explores what might happen when established technological systems and structures of control cease to serve the communities that depend upon them. Its inhabitants reclaim and adapt the existing urban fabric, developing a more resilient, resourceful and self-sustaining way of life.

Through Re-Enchanted City, Laurie challenges the idea that technological progress and efficiency alone should define the future of our built environment. Instead, the drawing offers a vision of architecture that embraces innovation without sacrificing individuality, combining environmental responsibility with human experience to create places that are distinctive, meaningful and capable of evolving over time.

An international celebration of architectural drawing

The winning drawing will be displayed at the World Architecture Festival in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from 18–20 November 2026, bringing Laurie’s vision of Re-Enchantment to an international audience of architects and designers. It will subsequently feature in the dedicated Architecture Drawing Prize exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London in early 2027, a particularly fitting setting given the museum’s historic role in celebrating architectural imagination, drawing and the creative process.