New Practices New York, a biennial competition since 2006, serves as the preeminent platform in New York City to recognize and promote new and innovative architecture and design firms. The juried portfolio competition is sponsored by the New Practices Committee of the AIA New York Chapter and honors firms that have utilized unique and innovative strategies, both for the projects they undertake and for the practices they have established. Participants must register by January 15th. To register and for more detailed information, please visit their website here.
Magda Mostafa, guest editor for the Open House International Journal and associate professor at the American University in Cairo announced a call for papers for their special issue on the topic of built environments for special populations. More information on the call for papers including important dates and deadlines after the break.
Since 2006, the International Art Consultants (IAC) has celebrated architects’ passion for photography through the Architect’s Eye Awards. Simon Kennedy won the Architecture and Place category this year with his image of the ‘Heygate Estate’, while Revti Halai’s photo of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion received runner-up. The Architecture and People category was won by Neil Dusheiko’s photograph of ‘Unite d’Habitation’, and Chris Drummond’s ‘Ghosts of the Underground’ received runner-up.
View the four winning photographs after the break.
The final entries are in for the international redesign competition of the St. Petersburg Pier in Florida. The competition seeks to generate a new identity and iconic landmark that will honor the history and relevance of the Pier for the next generation. Michael Maltzan Architecture, BIG and West 8 Urbaban Design and Landscape Architecture are the three architectural firms selected from the list of nine semi finalists. Continue reading after the break to view the radically different design proposals.
Published by Analist Group and organized and curated by the Italian Association of Architecture and Criticism_presS/Tfactory, the OUTSIDE THE BOX competition is focused on identifying design ideas for resolving various problems in emergency situations. During recent years, numerous natural phenomena have upset the lives of many communities scattered across the globe. Examples include Fukushima in Japan, Haiti, L’Aquila and New Orleans. The Box is a small temporary structure capable of offering various services: a space that is simultaneously a workstation and information center open to public to allow people remain in touch with the rest of the world. A fundamental role in the elaboration of the design proposal must be entrusted to technology, whether low- or high-tech. The challenge launched by the competition is to combine sustainability and parametric design. The submission deadline is 15 January, 2012. More information on the competition after the break.
Conceived and promoted by the Ferrara Faculty of Architecture, Italy, with the financial support of the Fassa Bortolo company, the aim of the International Award for Sustainable Architecture, now in its ninth edition, is to contribute to the research of a system of development in the building sector. This represents one of the fields of human activity with the greatest impact on the environment, that is more sustainable than our current model, which has lead to a state of deterioration and pollution, bringing us to the verge of a global crisis of the Earth’s entire ecological system.
Architecture for Humanity has launched the 2011 Open Architecture Challenge: RESTRICTED ACCESS, asking architects and designers to partner with community groups across the world and develop innovative solutions to re-envision closed, abandoned and decommissioning military sites. The six-month competition requires designers to work with the communities surrounding these former places of conflict to transform hostile and oftentimes painful locations, into civic spaces built for the public good. More information on the competition after the break.
CityVision, in collaboration with FARM, is proud to announce a new international competition called PFFF, an architecture competition dedicated to architects, designers, students and engineers focused on the design and realization of an inflatable mobile pavilion of 50sqm that can embody the spirit of the FARM project.
With its third annual competition, SMIBE (Society for Moving Images about the Built Environment), sponsored by The Graham Foundation, Archinect, and Image, continues to bring together a growing body of moving image stories about the built environment. They hope the competition will become a forum for the exchange and discussion of persuasive issues about the built world. For this competition, SMIBE welcomes moving image stories that investigate, explore, and entertain our communities about social, environmental, political, technological, and economic issues that designers of the built world should be discussing.
Van Alen Institute, a New York-based organization dedicated to projects in public architecture, is joining the U.S. National Park Service to launch Parks for the People: A Student Competition to Reimagine America’s National Parks. Students and faculty will have a once-in-a-generation chance to creatively rethink our national parks’ connections to people, and their role as revered natural, social, and cultural destinations through design studios focusing on one of seven national parks. More information on the competition after the break.
DesignByMany‘s latest challenge: Pop-up Retail Store sponsored by HP and media partners ArchDaily. For new Fall fashions and back-to-school shopping, ‘pop-up’ retail shops are the hottest trend. These small, temporary shops are bringing fashion and an urban edge to under-utilized and vacant spaces. This challenge is to design a quickly constructed or prefabricated, free-standing shop of no more than 200 square feet.
DesignByMany is a challenge based design technology community where users post challenges to the community along with their design source files. The community can then post responses with their own source files to solve the challenge. They can also comment on the challenge and interact with other designers throughout the process.
Over 500 people from all across the country and around the world participated in the National Ideas Competition for the Washington Monument Grounds. From a field of twenty-four semifinalists, a distinguished jury chose six top ideas. Now it is the public’s turn to choose the top two People’s Choice winners. More information on the finalists and their proposals after the break.
Kyiv City State Administration, Kyiv Central Agency for Urban Planning, Architecture and Urban Design with the support of National Union of Architects of Ukraine are pleased to announce the open international architectural competition, ‘Concept of Reservation and Development of Kyiv Islands’. Contestants are requested to submit the best concept of preservation and development of Kyiv islands.
The Zagreb Society of Architects is launching the fourth and the last competition for this year’s Think Space cycle – Moral Borders. For this year’s annual cycle, the main theme connecting all four competitions is Borders
With a new firm name and a unique offer, Design Farm announced their new offer: Free Schematic Design Services to Individuals, Non-profits, Small Businesses and Developers. This is the essence of what makes this competition so unique. You submit the building project while you get to ride along through the design process from a licensed architecture firm.
The exciting competition titled “On the House” allows three lucky nominees to be chosen to work with a licensed architect to develop a complete schematic design package including preliminary floor plans, elevations, and 3D renderings of the selected project . If you like what Design Farm designs for your project, you can hire them to take it through the completion of the project. If you do not like what they put together for you, it is still on the house although they will retain the copyright. More information on the competition after the break.
The Festival is part of the city heart of Montpellier; it will take place in the heart of Montpellier and more specifically in the courtyards of certain town house. At the same time it will be proposed a course to the visitors, goes out of architectural discovery in the city heart. Deadline for all submissions is December 15th. More information after the break.
Black Spectacles, who has teamed up with the Chicago Architectural Club, has recently created The Un-Competition Project. Invent a project, design it, and post your design on our Facebook page, with a 60 second video. They want to hear how you came up with your project, what your design is, and how you are going to get it built.
So, no, there is no competition brief, and no, they’re not going to get your project built. You make the project up yourself, big or small- you sell it, and you figure out how to get it built. Then document it in a video, and they’ll show it to the world. More information on the competition after the break.
Fentress Global Challenge is an annual international competition created by Fentress Architects to engage students worldwide in the exploration of future design possibilities in public architecture. The competition theme changes each year to reflect current issues. For 2011, students around the globe are invited to envision the Airport of the Future.
Winning students will receive cash prizes and gain international exposure. Top design concepts will be exhibited online and in the Airport of the Future section of the international touring exhibition Now Boarding: Fentress Airports and the Architecture of Flight, which will offer a multi-media immersion into the past, present and future of airport design. It will open in North America in the summer of 2012, and will travel internationally through 2015. More information on the competition after the break.
All interested architects are invited to partake in an open international competition for a new 4 star hotel in Jurmala, Latvia. The resort city, located on the coast of the Baltic Sea, is well known for its musical heritage, and the hotel will express elements related to music in its design concept.
The history of Jurmala has long been tied together with the musical character of the Baltic Sea – the sound of waves crashing on the beach, the whistling of old pine trees in the wind, the shrieking seagulls in the sky, the shifting sand under your feet, and even the distant chime of the leaving train – all of this and more creates a whole symphony in the memories of everyone who has ever been here. More competition information after the break.
John Thackara, photo by Kristi van Riet via Wikimedia Commons
In his forthright and insightful essay, designer/author/Doors of Perception director John Thackara discusses problems with today’s design completions and offers up some compelling suggestions for change.
Complaints range from moralistic, “competitions are too often staged for wrong or unclear reasons;” to humanistic, “attention is usually focused on the thing rather than on the person or team behind the thing;” to mundane, “there is seldom enough time in the judging process to assess entries adequately.” I assume such complaints are obvious to anyone on the judging-side of the design competition world, and that saying all this out loud might come off as obnoxious, but as a recent architecture school graduate I appreciate Thackara’s full disclosure. Knowledge is power, y’all. Likewise, Thackara’s proposed redesigns range from pragmatic, “get real: Insist on external partners and a live context,” to idealistically postmodern, suggesting competitions “ask entrants to create platforms and contexts in which diverse groups of people may co-design the systems, institutions and processes that shape our daily lives.” As reasonable as the suggestion may be, allusions to leftist, Los Angeles School-style activism might cause some readers to lose interest.
The San Diego Architectural Foundation (SDAF) wants to know what you think makes San Diego’s architecture and design blossom – or stink, and is again soliciting public nominations through August 31 for projects to be considered for this year’s Orchids & Onions Awards. All San Diegans are encouraged to take a few moments to have their say about what they view as the good, the bad and the ugly in categories including Architecture, Historic Preservation, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, and Miscellaneous; which covers just about everything in-between. By uploading a few photos on the SDAF’s Orchids and Onions website, along with your rationalization, you can be part of cultivating a more thoughtfully designed San Diego. More competition description after the break.
STREET WORKS is a competition to create temporary installations that transform under-utilised public spaces into vibrant places. An initiative of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) NSW, STREET WORKS invites you to re-imagine spaces in the City of Sydney as dynamic, innovative and sustainable temporary public places that will bring people together in unique ways.
The participants should take into consideration the advances in technology, the exploration of sustainable systems, and the establishment of new urban and architectural methods to solve economic, social, and cultural problems of the contemporary city including the scarcity of natural resources and infrastructure and the exponential increase of inhabitants, pollution, economic division, and unplanned urban sprawl. More information on the competition’s official website.
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