Design watchdog Cabe and its French counterpart have unveiled a shortlist of seven Anglo-French practices for a social housing competition in London
The teams will develop ideas for affordable housing at White City, west London, for housing association Octavia. They will also draw up designs for 735 units at the Rayners Lane estate in north-west London for Warden housing association.

Alex Ely, head of sustainable communities at CABE, said: "Not since Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers have we seen such promising design talent come together across the channel."

The seven shortlisted collaborations are: Lab Architecture Studio–Atelier Seraji; Featherstone Associates–Bernard Buhler Architecte; Cartwright Pickard architects–B+C Architectes; Allford Monaghan Morris–Atelier Dubosc et Landowski; Audley English Associates–Lipa and Serge Goldstein; Piercy Connor–DZO Architecture; and Proctor Matthews–Michel W Kagan.

A winner will be announced during Architecture Week at the end of this month.

A second shortlist will soon be drawn up for the designs of two sites in Paris, Ile de France and Senart.

  • CABE and four other urban development organisations, including English Heritage, will launch a joint document next week advising the government how to spend its £500m market renewal fund for rejuvenating housing in northern England. The document will recommend that a large chunk of this money is spent on creating open public spaces to make developments more attractive.