The contest, launched by China's Construction Ministry, is to encourage the development of small and medium-sized apartments in China, whose housing prices have been rocketing since 2003.

"The result shows less attention was given to small and medium apartments before," said Song Chunhua, chairman of the China Real Estate Association.

"There is still plenty of room to explore to make small apartments more comfortable," Song was quoted as saying by Sunday's the Beijing News.

Chinese cities are overwhelmed with large apartments. An investigation by the construction ministry in April showed that the average construction area of new apartments in 40 big Chinese cities are 113 square meters.

The new apartment for sales in Beijing was 143.9 square meters on average, greatly pushing up the overall price of a new apartment.

Liu Zhifeng, vice construction minister said China would reform the payment system to encourage design for small apartments.

Chinese designers are now paid by construction area. If they work on small apartment project, they have to spend more time and energy but get the same payment for one building.

China welcomes foreign designers to participate in small apartment projects, according to the construction ministry.

The ministry statistics shows that China has 1,500 foreign-invested design and construction companies. They are engaged in a wide range of projects including Olympic stadiums.