Autodesk and AIAS 2010 Student Sustainable Design Challenge

Autodesk and AIAS have teamed up to create a great design competition, and... guess what? Revit and Ecotect are REQUIRED for submission.

Contest Description
Over the past five years, temporary shelters have grown from a niche design element to a necessary aspect of the architecture profession. Ranging from transitional housing and community charrettes in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina or the need for entirely new villages built following the tsunami in Thailand, natural disasters have increased the need for successful and thoughtful design of short-term shelters. The earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, has yet again put the spotlight on temporary shelters and good, quickly built structures to facilitate the thousands of homeless families in Port-au-Prince.

Numerous organizations and individuals have focused their efforts on developing housing for the nearly 600,000 homeless in Port-au-Prince. On the other hand, without social areas such as community centers, schools, and libraries, the city of Port-au-Prince will struggle to bring displaced individuals back to the city center. It has been estimated that of the 4,616 schools surveyed in Port-au-Prince, 80 percent are damaged and approximately 431 teachers and 4,000 students were killed. An additional 250,000 schoolchildren are now displaced.

Autodesk and the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) are challenging design students from around the globe to create designs for small single-room schools that could be constructed across Port-au-Prince with limited materials and minimal construction experience. Using Autodesk® Revit® and Autodesk® Ecotect® Analysis software and the predefined site and materials files provided, registrants can submit their designs before June 4, 2010, to be reviewed and juried by professionals in attendance at the AIA National Convention and Expo in Miami. Winners will be announced on June 12, 2010.

Click here to check out the competition details and prizes... Pretty neat.

Also, some great Revit kid, I mean user, out there created a nice template file for the competition with loads of parametric families and the existing site so everyone starts on the same page. It can be downloaded on the Challenge page. What a nice guy ;)

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.