Competitions

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS We are launching this competition in the context of larger issues concerning the environment, global food production and the imperative to generate a sense of community in our urban and suburban neighborhoods. From... more

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS We are launching this competition in the context of larger issues concerning the environment, global food production and the imperative to generate a sense of community in our urban and suburban neighborhoods. From Mowing to Growing is not meant to transform each lawn into a garden, but to open us up to the possibilities of self-sustenance, organic growth, and perpetual change. In particular, we seek specific technical, urbanistic, and architectural strategies not simply for the food production required to feed the cities and suburbs, but the possibilities of diet, agriculture, and retrofitted facilities that could achieve that level within the constraints of the local climate. Seeking architects, urban designers, planners, engineers, scientists, artists, students and individuals of all backgrounds:
• How can we break the American love affair with the suburban lawn?
• Can green houses be incorporated in skyscrapers?
• What are the urban design strategies for food production in cities?
• Can food grow on rooftops, parking lots, building facades?
• What is required to remove foreclosure signs on lawns and convert them to gardens? We want to see how you'd design future-proof spaces and systems to explore the larger framework of suburban and urban agriculture and its effects on the architecture and urban design. PROJECT BACKGROUND:
Research points out that North Americans devote 40,000 square miles to lawns, more that we use for wheat, corn, or tobacco. And, also that Americans spend $750 million dollars a year on grass seed alone while only 2% of America's food is locally grown, 12% of every dollar's worth of food consumed at home comes from transportation costs. In July 2005, Los Angeles-based architect Fritz Haeg launched the campaign known as "Edible Estates". Haeg says he was drawn to the lawn - that "iconic American space" - because it cut across social, political and economic boundaries. "The lawn really struck me as one of the few places that we all share," he says. "It represents what we're all supposedly working so hard for - the American dream." The concept of tilling one's front yard is not a new one. In 1942, as the U.S. emerged from the Great Depression and mobilized for World War II, Agriculture Secretary Claude R. Wickard encouraged Americans to plant "Victory Gardens" to boost civic morale and relieve the war's pressure on food supplies - an idea first introduced during The Great War and picked up by Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain. The slogan became "Have Your Garden, and Eat It Too." Soon gardens began popping up everywhere, and not just American lawns - plots sprouted up at the Chicago County Jail, a downtown parking lot in New Orleans, and a zoo in Portland, Ore. In 1943, Americans planted 20.5 million Victory Gardens, and the harvest accounted for nearly one-third of all the vegetables consumed in the country that year. Twenty-five million U.S. households planted vegetable and fruit gardens in 2008, according to the National Gardener's Association. First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack have planted organic vegetable gardens this year. Roof gardens are sprouting nationwide. Community gardens have waiting lists. Seed houses and canning suppliers are oversold. The time is NOW. ELIGIBILITY:
Professionals and students of all fields are eligible to submit. However, there will be two separate categories of judging: one for professionals and college students and the second for high school students. PRIZE:
PROFESSIONALS
The winner will receive the ONE Prize of $10,000. The five finalists will receive prominent year-long exposure on the competition website; presentation of designs at the award ceremony and web symposium and will be featured in the media sponsors. The web symposium will provide a platform to match the finalists with leading experts in fields relevant to farming, urban agriculture, planning, market analysis and land use development.
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
The winner will receive $1,000 cash award, prominent year-long exposure on competition website; presentation of designs at the award ceremony and web symposium and will be featured in the media sponsors. REGISTER
All teams must register by the official registration date utilizing the downloadable form. The registration fees are $150 per professional team (including college students) and $50 per high school student team. You can make a payment online by credit card using the donate button on our website at: www.oneprize.org/register.html If you would prefer to use a check or money order, please make it payable to Terreform ONE and send it to: Terreform ONE, 33 Flatbush Ave. 7th Floor, Brooklyn , NY 11217 Registration form should be emailed to info@oneprize.org All qualifying registration applications (form with payment) must be postmarked by March 31, 2010. Applications postmarked after that deadline will be disqualified. Upon receiving registration applications, Terreform 1 will issue each registrant a registration number, which must appear on the first page of the proposal or in the upper right hand corner. LOGISTICS
All submissions are non returnable and all registration fees are non refundable. Decisions regarding finalists and winners are at the discretion of the selected jury and Terreform 1. Terreform 1 retains the right to use any and all submitted work for press, publication, and exhibition purposes. Copyright to the work is retained by the original author teams. There is no maximum number of submissions that may be made by any one team or individual team member. However, every submission must be individually registered, with fees paid. Submissions, formatted as a single PDF file no larger than 10MB should be emailed to info@oneprize.org Email questions to: Maria Aiolova, LEED AP maria@terreform.org DATES
December 1st, 2009: Registration opens; Question period opens
March 31, 2010: Registration closes; Answers posted
April 30, 2010: Submission Due
May 31, 2010: Finalists announced
June, 2010: Award Ceremony and Web Symposium; Exhibition launched   collapse

** PLEASE NOTE: OFFICIAL COMPETITION SCHEDULE NOT RELEASED YET, WE WILL UPDATE IT HERE WHEN IT BECOMES AVAILABLE ** The Marine Culture and Pop Music Center is an integral part of the major public investment and construction plan by the... more

** PLEASE NOTE: OFFICIAL COMPETITION SCHEDULE NOT RELEASED YET, WE WILL UPDATE IT HERE WHEN IT BECOMES AVAILABLE ** The Marine Culture and Pop Music Center is an integral part of the major public investment and construction plan by the Kaohsiung City Government. A major investment toward the overall development of Kaohsiung and even the whole of Southern Taiwan, it is one of the "i-Taiwan 12 Infrastructure Projects" as well as the "International Art and Pop Music Center" under Executive Yuan's "New Ten Construction Projects", which has a budget of NT$500 billion over five years. Through the building of an international art and cultural performance venue and a marine culture center, the aim is to establish Kaohsiung as a fulcrum for Asia-Pacific pop music production and performance and an international exchange platform for marine culture. The central and direct goal of the Project is to create a Marine Culture and Pop Music Center that highlights the unique character of Kaohsiung City while satisfying the needs of the local people, the industries and future trends. This is to be achieved by basing its design and planning on the cultural assets of Kaohsiung, the strengths and conditions of the Project site and the characteristics of the pop music and marine culture industries. The pop music component of the Project, to be equipped world-class hardware, will help foster music professionals in Southern Taiwan, provide a leaven for pop music and its related industries and create a Southern Taiwan incubator for pop music.   collapse

"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed."
-- President Rene Preval of Haiti In the wake of the Port-au-Prince earthquake, Haitians have sustained an immense loss of life,... more

"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed."
-- President Rene Preval of Haiti In the wake of the Port-au-Prince earthquake, Haitians have sustained an immense loss of life, with numbers still climbing, and the collapse of physical structures signifying the collapse of the governmental, social, economic, and infrastructural institutions those structures housed and represented. Many of those institutions and infrastructures were weak before the quake, as Haiti is among the world's poorest nations, reliant on international aid and subject to severe economic disparity. This earthquake was no typical disaster, and Haiti is no typical disaster-struck region. In many ways, Port-au-Prince and its institutions required rebuilding before the buildings collapsed. The relief effort of this particular disaster goes beyond air-dropping supplies and building emergency housing. Haiti also requires an emergency economic system (the banks and tax office have collapsed), an emergency medical system (hospitals have collapsed), an emergency justice system (courthouses and the federal prison have collapsed), emergency education (schools have collapsed), and an emergency government (the parliament and many ministry buildings have collapsed). People talk about emergency shelter. What about emergency institutions, only one of which is housing? Participants in February's Spontaneous Architecture competition are invited to take this question seriously, enacting a response onto the site included below. The site includes multiple institutions and social, economic, and governmental infrastructures as well as residential areas and open space parks currently being used as campsites for those in need of housing. Participants are asked to consider one or all of the institutions present and can operate on the entire site or a specific portion thereof. Responses can be strategic, organizational, institutional, and/or architectural. Submissions are single images, formatted in 8.5 inches by 11 inches (landscape), 300dpi tiffs. Images must be anonymous, containing no identication of their creators. Submissions may (but are not required to) include up to 100 words of text. All submissions are due by 11:59PM on 15 February 2010. Participate to Donate. As always, the winner of February's Spontaneous Architecture competition will receive fifty percent of the entry fees collected from the month's submissions. This month, the remaining portion of the entry fees will be donated to the Haitian relief effort.       collapse

The CAE Design Awards is an Internet-based marketplace of ideas. Through this forum the committee will disseminate quality ideas on educational facility planning and design to clients, architects, and the public. As we rethink and resh... more

The CAE Design Awards is an Internet-based marketplace of ideas. Through this forum the committee will disseminate quality ideas on educational facility planning and design to clients, architects, and the public. As we rethink and reshape what we do as architects, we must evaluate and measure our successes, and have an arena in which to test ideas. This awards program is an opportunity to engage in critical evaluation and experimentation, not as an end in itself, but always in the context of our clients and their needs. The CAE Design Awards seek to identify, honor, and disseminate the projects and ideas that exhibit innovation and excellence through: - The enhancement of the client's educational program through the thoughtful planning and design of facilities - The integration of function and aesthetics in designs that also respect the surrounding community and context - A planning/design process that is educational, collaborative, and builds the capacity of the school and its community to support its students This program has two primary areas of focus: the project area and the forum of ideas. 1. The project area will focus on how individual projects further the client's mission, goals, and educational program. In this area, the entire story will be told with respect to how each submitted project is conceived, planned, designed, built, inhabited, and evaluated. This area will portray quality within both the process and the product. The best processes exhibit authentic collaboration between the design team, the client, and the community as they work together to fulfill the client's goals. These are projects that show exemplary care in serving the client and ensuring a quality built environment, both functionally and aesthetically. 2. The forum of ideas will be a place for experimentation, a planting bed for thoughts to nurture and grow. The process of conceiving, planning, designing, and building is a path of discovery, and the forum of ideas will be sufficiently flexible to respond to the imagination of the participants. This area will not necessarily showcase entire projects, but rather select elements from projects.   collapse

The call is to design a pragmatic art installation for one of three pre-selected sites that fulfills the following criteria: - Is a three dimensional form that has the ability to stimulate and challenge the mind of the viewer on a cont... more

The call is to design a pragmatic art installation for one of three pre-selected sites that fulfills the following criteria: - Is a three dimensional form that has the ability to stimulate and challenge the mind of the viewer on a contemplative level. - Embodies a sense of beauty and concept in its built form that is derived from the artistic sensitivities of the design team and from an acute attention to details. - Captures energy from nature, converts it into electricity, and has the ability to store, and/or transform and transmit electrical power to a power grid connection point to be supplied by others. - Does not create secondary emissions other than electricity and does not pollute its surroundings. - Is safe to people who would view it. Consideration must be made for viewing platforms and boundaries between public and restricted areas. - Is pragmatic and constructible within reason and employs technology that can be scalable and tested. There is no limit on the type of technology or the proprietary nature of the technology. The Land Art Generator Initiative will endeavor to reach contractual agreements with any company and/or patent holder that is specified as a part of a successful design entry. It is recommended that the design team make an effort to engage such entities in preliminary dialogue as a part of their own research and development of the design entry. - Does not negatively impact the natural surroundings. Each entry should provide an environmental impact assessment in order to determine the effects of the project on the ecosystem into which the installation is to be constructed. Mention should be given to a mitigation strategy that will address any foreseeable issues. - Uses all or any portion of the site. There is no requirement or restriction on size other than those of the plot limits themselves and the environmental footprint of the design. The designs should be considered first and foremost as art installations. The consideration for energy generation should come in a very close second. What this means is that the installations are art first, power plants second. There may need to be sacrifices to be made in terms of efficiency of energy generation in order that the design function primarily on a conceptual and aesthetic level. The objective is not to design and engineer a device that provides the cheapest KWh or the most energy per square meter of land.   collapse

Dream Home Awards are presented to those companies and individuals who assist in creating America's Dream Homes and set new standards of excellence in the Nation's Building Industry. The competition is open to interior designers, archi... more

Dream Home Awards are presented to those companies and individuals who assist in creating America's Dream Homes and set new standards of excellence in the Nation's Building Industry. The competition is open to interior designers, architects, building and remodeling firms, communities and trade contractors. Firms are invited to enter from across all 50 states to compete in custom home products, interior design, commercial and mixed-use projects as well as the prestigious Community of the Year, Home of the Year, Community Service of the Year. Our awards program is the only comprehensive competition open to the nation's design-build industry. The Dream Home Awards also awards individual trades for unique products and services assisting the building process. Our Paper Free Company
Dream Home Awards is America's true green industry awards program. All of our judging, announcements and advertising are done without paper, printing or shipping. Our goal is to assist architects, builders and designers who are taking the industry to the next level. Offices
Dream Home Awards central offices are located in Littleton, Colorado at the foot of Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Dream Home Awards was conceived of in 2007 to create a comprehensive program to award excellence in the nation's building industry. Dream Home Awards is an non-exclusive program open to architects, builder, developers, interior designers and tradesmen to showcase the ingenuity, trend setting and classical products created each year in this creative industry. Promotions
In this evolving and dynamic time, Dream Home Awards constantly strives to explore new ways to market products and services for the design build industry in this technological savvy global economy. We encourage non printed publications that can be transported and distributed with low carbon footprint for cost savings as well as natural resource preservation.   collapse

Over the past decade architecture has witnessed a revolution in design and fabrication tools available to the discipline that has changed the way we imagine space forever. Digital design methods for form finding and implementing have p... more

Over the past decade architecture has witnessed a revolution in design and fabrication tools available to the discipline that has changed the way we imagine space forever. Digital design methods for form finding and implementing have produced an influential body of work, preoccupied with the development of novel, complex and heterogeneous spatial form. This form, simply referred to as 'geometry', is often evaluated through performance driven issues emphasising the environmental and structural parameters that shape it. Yet, throughout history, the emergence of new spatial forms and with them new architectural styles, bear significance beyond advances in technology but in relation to what they offer to the human condition in terms of aesthetic and social processes - issues currently under-represented by the discourse. 'Concrete Geometries' is a work-in-progress term derived from the notion of 'concrete' as 'existing in reality or in actual experience' or 'capable of being perceived by the senses' and the abbreviation 'geometries' for the constructed environment. 'Concrete Geometries' like Concrete Science, Concrete Music or Concrete Art is interested in the particular and immediate, concerned with actual use or practice. 'Concrete Geometries' is an attempt to expand this current debate. Set up as a cross-disciplinary Research Cluster at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, 'Concrete Geometries' investigates the intimate relationship between spatial form and human processes - be they social or aesthetic - and the variety of new material entities this relationship might provoke. By bringing together art, architecture, sciences and humanities, we hope to connect fields of knowledge that are currently fragmented through disciplinary boundaries. The call is structured into two thematic fields:
A: Geometry and Perception
B: Geometry and Social Processes The cluster wishes to address such questions as:
-How is spatial form socially and experientially relevant?
-How does it choreograph human processes?
-Can it stimulate emotional or behavioral responses or create particular aesthetic experiences?
-Can social cultures be pattered through formal configurations of space?
-How can the articulation of a space support acts of inhabitation, appropriation or other types of direct engagement?
-How do we perceive space visually and bodily?
-What social or aesthetic consequences does the formal articulation of space have for our everyday lives and for the production of reality?
-What kind of associations emerge between spatial form and social actors? To advance this research, we are seeking submissions that provide practical or theoretical contribution. Submissions may include works of art or design, architectural projects or case studies, urban studies, research papers, scientific experiments and other forms of inquiry that address the objectives outlined. 10 Projects and 10 Texts will be selected by the curatorial board for inclusion in an exhibition, symposium and publication at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 2010. The call is open to students, practitioners and researchers from the fields of Architecture, Art, Design, Urban Design, Geography, Neuroscience, Behavioral Psychology, Spatial Cognition, Social Science, Ethnography, Anthropology and other disciplines concerned with such questions.   collapse