Fineline Studio, in collaboration with CRADO, has been awarded an Honourable Mention—the runner-up prize—in the 2025 Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition for “The Town on the Hill”, a proposal for new housing in the historic hill town of La Fresneda in Teruel, Spain.

The international competition, organised by the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Culture, INTBAU Spain and the Spanish High Council of Institutes of Architects, invites architects to develop proposals for towns threatened by depopulation, promoting architecture that preserves and continues the forms, materials and character of each place.

Working with the grain of the historic town, the scheme introduces a series of modest new homes arranged around stepped streets and planted courtyards. The design draws on local construction techniques and materials—stone, lime plaster and timber—applied in a contemporary vernacular. New buildings extend the massing, rhythm and proportions of the existing fabric while adapting to modern patterns of living, with thresholds, arcades and deep window reveals mediating between public and private life.

The awards were presented in June 2025 at a ceremony held at IE University’s Segovia campus, and the winning proposals feature in an accompanying exhibition and publication. The recognition reflects the studio’s ongoing commitment to working within existing fabric, and to an architecture rooted in place, craft and continuity.