The winner of the Brabant Style Award 2025 with the theme ‘Smart and fast building, pleasant living’ is the industrial housing project Mainelaan in Eindhoven. Jury chair Wilma Dirken, Deputy for Housing of the Province of North Brabant, announced this today during the Brabant Housing Day.
Housing corporation Trudo, in collaboration with construction company Hurks, is realizing 18 sustainable social rental homes on Mainelaan in a homeownership neighborhood where a school used to stand. The project breaks resistance, shows courage, and focuses on ecological building with biobased materials and full timber construction. The communal garden promotes meeting and social cohesion, and parking spaces are limited but suitable for shared cars. The winner receives a specially designed trophy by artist Simone van Bakel.
The Brabant Style Award from the Province of North Brabant highlights how Brabanders collaborate on a beautiful and pleasant living environment. For this fourth edition, the province sought projects that demonstrate the opportunities and qualities of industrial housing construction. The focus is on living, economy, environmental quality, sustainability, and social aspects. The province aims to give industrial housing a full place in Brabants housing sector. The 22 submissions for the Brabant Style Award 2025 set a good example. Five finalists were chosen from the submissions. Besides the winner Mainelaan in Eindhoven, these were De Stip (Breda), Veldbloemenhof (Etten-Leur), STEK in de Groote Wielen (Rosmalen), and Wood Up (Eindhoven).
Beautiful and affordable sustainability
The construction of 18 sustainable social rental homes shows ambition where the involved parties are vulnerable and open the doors to the rest of the market. The concept is also reasonably adaptable to other locations. The jury is particularly enthusiastic about this project and unanimously chooses Mainelaan as the winner. This project shows that sustainability is beautiful and affordable. Urban densification, industrial housing construction, climate adaptation, and quality of living environment go hand in hand. The result is beautiful spacious homes!
Koen Waijers, commercial director of Hurks: We are proud to have been able to build these social rental homes CO2-negative. Yolanda van der Zanden, project manager of housing corporation Trudo: Unlike the other finalists, these homes may remain permanently. And we are very proud of that.
Public award goes to STEK in de Groote Wielen
The Brabant Style Award 2025 consists of a jury prize and a public prize. The public prize, a cash amount of €2,500, goes this year to STEK in de Groote Wielen. This project received the most votes from the Brabant public. STEK is a modular residential neighborhood with 200 timber homes that are almost ready-made built in the housing factory using many biobased materials. The rental homes are divided over 12 yards. Each yard forms its own diverse community in a very green environment. STEK won the public prize with a clear lead, over 33% of the votes. De Stip finished second with over 20% of the votes, followed by Mainelaan (17%), Veldbloemenhof (15%), and Wood Up (13%).
Honorable mention for De Stip
De Stip is a modular residential neighborhood with 182 independent homes and 10 shared student homes in a unique location on the edge of the center in Breda. De Stip aims to be a place where residents live together, meet each other, and contribute to a strong, inclusive community. The speed with which this neighborhood was built proves the power of industrial housing construction. The homes are movable and reusable and can last on average 50 years, making them future-proof. The jury praises this project for the scale of building in which sufficient mass is added with different housing layers, yet each home differs. According to the jury, De Stip deserves an honorable mention because it was realized very quickly and took the risk of housing multiple target groups simultaneously.