Student Competitions: The Latest Architecture and News

Competing in this year’s 15th annual Multi Comfort Student Contest, Saint-Gobain had over 2,200 students from 199 universities worldwide. The final was narrowed down to 60 competing teams from 34 countries, all of whom traveled to Milan to present their designs to an international panel of experts from the Municipality of Milan. This year’s brief was to design a project to rehabilitate and reconnect the urban area around Crescenzago subway station in Milan in line with the city’s #milano2030 development plan. The competition also focuses on Saint-Gobain’s concept of Multi Comfort: thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort, as well as good indoor air quality.

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Budapest-based Hello Wood has announced an open call for team-leaders to participate in its award-winning summer school from July 14-22, 2016. The eight day Project Village program focuses on envisioning a design for a “new village model,” and then on building the imagined projects. The 2015 program brought together academics and students from more than 30 countries and 25 universities. This year, Project Village is looking for experienced architects, designers and artists to join the team in western Hungary, only two hours away from the capital.

The theme for the 2016 program is “Settling: The Rituals of Arrival,” which will explore the ways communities make themselves feel at home. Participants will be asked to build “a place of arrival, permanence, and connection," exploring in their designs the architectural aspects of settling, what makes a place feel like home, and the roles of hosts and guests.

Aarhus School of Architecture, schmidt hammer lassen architects, VOLA, and the Danish Arts Foundation have announced their collaborative competition, entitled Drawing of the Year 2015, which calls for imaginative student drawings, and aims to “celebrate the oldest tool of architects.”

Students worldwide are invited to submit drawings “that inspire, communicate, and engage” with the theme of Sustainability Through Architecture. Thus, drawings “should focus on sustainability and architecture’s ambition to take an active part in the change of our society,” and “should address architecture’s ability to contribute to a sustainable environment on all scales—concepts, utopias, buildings, landscapes, and cities.”

Archstudies.gr and DeCorbuziers, in partnership with the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens, have announced their international student competition to design a conceptual funerary monument for the death of Modernism.

With this year marking the 50^th anniversary of Le Corbusier’s death, the team of organizations is seeking “contemporary interpretations concerning multidisciplinary approaches over Modernism and specifically over Le Corbusier’s work, while [exploring] possible themes and directions of the memorial representation” in present day. Designs should emphasize commentary, rather than a tribute to Le Corbusier.

Open to any student of architecture or architect who has graduated within three years prior to their submission, the ISARCH Awards are international awards providing a platform for debate surrounding student solutions to architecture’s problems. The competition highlights avant-garde trends and recognizes new research emerging from university studies. By extending the traditional relationship of student to university, young people are encouraged to join the debate on architecture, contributing fresh new visions and opinions.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) is pleased to announce TIMBER IN THE CITY: Urban Habitats Competition for the 2015-2016 academic year. The student competition is a partnership between the Binational Softwood Lumber Council (BSLC), the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons The New School for Design (SCE).

The purpose of the Competition is to engage students to imagine the repurposing of our existing cities with sustainable buildings from renewable resources, offering expedient affordable construction, innovating with new and old wooden materials, and designing healthy living and working environments.

In collaboration with the Van Alen Institute and 100 Resilient Cities, AECOM has announced its international Urban SOS: All Systems Go competition for undergraduate and graduate students.

The competition “calls on multidisciplinary teams of students to envision more resilient food, water, and energy systems for supplying cities and regions today and in the future.” Teams should “identify an urban population facing the possibility of disruption to its food, energy, or water systems, and offer strategies that strengthen these systems’ ability to withstand future shocks or stresses, while also making them more efficient, equitable, and accessible to diverse populations.” All “proposals must be located in one of 67 cities that currently make up the 100 Resilient Cities network.”

Hello Wood is looking for students and young architects, designers, and artists in their Project Village, its 2015 workshop and symposium held 11-19 July. Applications are due before the 16th of May.

This year’s event follows the success of Hello Wood’s workshop in the summer of 2014, which saw participation from over 120 architects, artists and designers from 25 countries. Project Village will examine the typology of the village and the means for its production, proposing new and more efficient methods of master planning and construction. Among the invited team leaders of Hello Wood 2015 are: the founder of Invisible Studio and Studio in the Woods, Piers Taylor; winner of ArchDaily’s Building of the Year 2014 award, Katsuya Fukushima; and founders of 72 Hour Urban Action architectural group. Open Call for students is available here.

Presented by the Ministry of Culture of Albania and Tirana Architecture Week 2014, "Lost Architecture - [En]Visioning New City Squares" attracted international entries from students and practitioners under the age of forty alike. Designers were invited to submit proposals for the improvement of Pyramid Square in Albania's capital, Tirana, and tasked with reflecting the city's rich history and evolving identity.

Amongst the proposals received was one from a Canadian team comprised of architect Naiji Jiao and landscape architect Seven Xiru Chen, whose entry “The Pyramid Park" was awarded first place. Read more about the winning entry after the break.

In Borders: A Very Short Introduction, Hagan Diener writes, "…every border has a story. Every line on a map, every maker in the landscape, was derived from some complex negation of power and culture." It is this potency of meaning that makes the physical and conceptual border such a fascinating site. The 2013-2014 ACSA administered and AISC sponsored Steel Design Student Competition challenged students to design a border crossing station addressing the complex factors of cross-border relationships, using structural steel as the primary material. Learn more about the competition and the winning projects after the break.

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The Global Schindler Award is a new competition for students that will explore questions about universal mobility and access amidst rapid globalization and urbanization. In its inaugural year, a real site in Shenzhen – a booming commercial and industrial area adjacent to Hong Kong – has been chosen as the subject of the urban design proposals. Entrants are being asked to re-imagine the city as an inclusive urban environment and will be vying for portions of the $150,000 prize fund.

Our friends at The Morpholio Project have just announced that submissions are open for Pinup 2014 - a free competition for students and young professionals to submit up to three digital images of their studio, 3D-printed, or unbuilt work. All work should acknowledge the existence of technology and question why/how "we harness it as designers." The guest jury includes participants from Fast Company, Metropolis Magazine, Columbia GSAPP, and even our very own Editor-in-Chief, David Basulto. Learn how to apply after the break!