Spontaneous Architecture Competition

Interesting idea for a competition I thought I would share with my readers:

January 2010 : the 20teens

The promises and terrors of our previously projected futures have both manifest and been forgotten. We are not living in a world of flying cars, intergalactic civilian travel, hovercraft skateboards, or robot assistants. No, but we have real-time video chat, the Hubble telescope, maglev trains, and smart phones. We are not living in the wasteland aftermath of nuclear war, but global warming is melting the arctic.

Images of our present future have historically been either utopian or dystopic. The technologies that were going to save us or destroy us have arguably done both to some degree, creating our greatest problems and our most significant solutions. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before and fewer critical tools to navigate that information with discrimination. We are more connected through our myriad telecommunications and more disconnected due to a growing class divide. The future is more complex than could've been predicted. It is more nuanced and diverse than Huxley, Orwell, Le Corbusier, or Nostradamus knew.

Times of crisis and calamity, like today, always put ideas in high demand: big ideas and big dreams to foster the next wave in invention and innovation on our way toward tomorrow.

We are living in what has historically been the future. Now that we are here, what is next? What is our future? This an open call for visionaries.

Answers to this question can take many forms: renderings of future imagined cities, advertisements, photographs, collages, maps, etcetera. There are no limits on content, only limits on format. All submissions must be formatted as a single letter sized (8.5 inch by 11 inch) landscape image, which contains no more than 100 words of text.

You have two weeks to respond. Submission closes at 11:59PM EST on January 15th, 2010.

New Year's Day 2010. Welcome to the future. Y2K is ten years behind us, and 2012 is at our doorstep.

STEP 1: REGISTER
Registration ID: *

Please create a Registration ID.
Example: john.doe_1
Your Registration ID is a combination of your email user name and the number 1, separated by an underscore.
For multiple submissions, use _2, _3, etc.
Registration Email: *

The email address referenced above.
Location: *

US Residents, please enter City, State, and Zip code. Non-US Residents, please enter your City and Country.
Profession: *

Please describe your profession, such as Architect, Graphic Designer, Architecture Student, Photographer, Accountant, etc.

STEP 2: UPLOAD YOUR IMAGE
CLICK HERE TO UPLOAD YOUR IMAGE
STEP 3: $5 ENTRY FEE
US$5.00 Payment securely managed by Paypal.

***IMPORTANT***
You must use the same email address in PayPal that you provided for your Registration Email above.

Reburbia

Great competition that just launched. Very simple submission requirements with a very powerful objective.

Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com are pleased to announce the first ever Reburbia competition: a design competition dedicated to re-envisioning the suburbs.

With the current housing crisis, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and rising energy costs, the future of suburbia looks bleak. Suburban communities in central California, Arizona and Florida are desolate and decaying, with for sale and foreclosure signs dotting many lawns. According to the US Census, about 90% of all metropolitan growth occurred in suburban communities in the last ten years. Urbanites who loathe the freeways, big box stores and bland aesthetics stereotypical of suburbia may secretly root for the end of sprawl, but demographic trends indicate that exurban growth is still on the rise.

In a future where limited natural resources will force us to find better solutions for density and efficiency, what will become of the cul-de-sacs, cookie-cutter tract houses and generic strip malls that have long upheld the diffuse infrastructure of suburbia? How can we redirect these existing spaces to promote sustainability, walkability, and community? It’s a problem that demands a visionary design solution and we want you to create the vision!

Calling all future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers:
Show us how you would re-invent the suburbs! What would a McMansion become if it weren’t a single-family dwelling? How could a vacant big box store be retrofitted for agriculture? What sort of design solutions can you come up with to facilitate car-free mobility, ‘burb-grown food, and local, renewable energy generation? We want to see how you’d design future-proof spaces and systems using the suburban structures of the present, from small-scale retrofits to large-scale restoration—the wilder the better!

Links:

• Reburbia Main Page
• Reburbia Entry Form
• Schedule
• Prizes

Competition open for Students. $2500!

I was contacted by an employee over at Turbosquid.com about a competition they just launched.  Really cool looking competition.  I am thinking about entering it myself.

Revit Architecture Contest - TurboSquid.com

The Revit Family Contest will run from Dec. 2, 2008 to March 31, 2009.

Prizes will be awarded in three categories:

Individual/Freelancer - Professionals submitting their personal creations
Corporate - Submissions on behalf of a company or other entity
Student - High school, university, or community college students

1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes will be awarded in each category:
1st prize: $2500
2nd prize: $1000
3rd prize: $500

All nine winners will get promotion on TurboSquid and a TurboSquid T-shirt.
You may submit as many entries as you like, but you must fill out a separate Revit Contest Entry Form for each entry. Entries can be interior, exterior, MEP, or any other kind of Revit design. TurboSquid reserves the right to use images entered in promotions of the contest. TurboSquid also reserves the right to eliminate one or more categories if insufficient entries have been received.

Entries will be judged on three criteria:
Quality of design (aesthetics, structural)
Number of published Revit families used in scene
Quality of published Revit families used in scene (correct flexing and parameterization)
Although you should strive to represent your entry as well as possible in the images you submit, the scene does not have to be rendered. Entries will be judged on the quality of scene as viewed in hidden line drawings.

Open Architecture Network.org

I would have to say my favorite part about being an Architecture student is the design studio.  Ultimately, this is why we chose the field... no?  The creativity and problem solving that go into the design process is unlike any other profession or class.  Sadly, there was one semester that I did not have a design class! (DUN DUN DUN)

I took it upon myself to look around the web for competitions open to students.  I found this wonderful website and registered for the competition.  I am now registered for The Open Architectural Network Challenge: Classroom.  This is a great competition open to basically anyone.  The challenge is broken up into different aspects of classrooms.  I decided to design a new portable/temporary classroom given that every public school in my area has fields of them.

Please check out the web site and sign up for a competition! It is a great network for students and architects to share ideas and designs.  Open Architecture Network has direct relations with Architecture for Humanity whom I have great support for.  I will be sharing my classroom design on this blog throughout the next few months as well (of course I will be doing it in Revit!).

Open Architecture Network.org

Architecture for Humanity

Here is my profile page.