Abcde BLOG

2011 Cleveland Design Competition. The competition jury is scheduled to be announced on May 27th, 2011. Please keep an eye out on the Cleveland Design Competition webpage for more information

AWR is inviting students from around the world to take part in a competition for graduate theses on sustainable architecture and design innovation. The goal of the competition is to increase and promote sustainability culture and green architecture.

Participation is open to all graduates of architecture and engineering faculties, from all over the world. The theses, whether individual or group work, must have been defended between January 1, 2009 and October 31, 2011.

Theses submitted to the competition should fall under the following categories: urban planning, architecture and technology

The purpose of the Abel Building Solutions Caribbean Construction Awards is to both recognise the merit of our regional industry and encourage the pursuit of excellence. The CCA, celebrates the players in the construction industry whose work shows true excellence in design and construction.

The awards were judged by an international panel that represented a cross-section of the industry; engineer Raymond Charles - United Kingdom, architect Marcos Barinas-Uribe - Dominican Republic, architect Llewellyn van Wyk - South Africa, engineer Tony Gibbs - Barbados & engineer Donald Mullings - Trinidad

2011 Awardees

Amonle Studio Workshop - Antillean Gothic

Awards:
Architecture - Innovation

Gillespie + Partners - UWI Daaga Lecture Theatre

Awards:
Architecture - Large Building
Architecture - Overall Winner

Peter Jervis & Associates - Basic Medical Sciences Complex

Awards:
Engineering - Large Building
Engineering - Innovation
Engineering - Overall Winner

Caribbean Office of Cooperative Architecture ( COCOA ) - Munding Residence

Awards:
Architecture - Small Building

Capital Signal Co. Ltd - Rockley to Coconut Walk Waterfront

Awards:
Contracting - Innovation
Contorting - Overall Winner

Think Brick Australia is currently accepting interest for the Think Brick Awards 2011. This award aims to encourage designers, architects and students to consider the artistic, environmental, and the versatile features of clay brick use.


Think Brick is the leading representer of Australia’s clay brick and paver manufacturers. They aim to ensure, and are committed to promoting clay brick as a contemporary, versatile and inspiring building material.


Think Brick invites architects and students to enter the About Face Student competition and the Horbury Hunt Award celebrating conceptual design for architectural students and brick craftsmanship across the country.

An interesting new competition announced recently entitled Network Reset: Rethinking the Chicago Emerald Necklace, An international competition organized by MAS Studio & Chicago Architectural Club
which asks respondents: "...to look at the urban scale and propose a framework for the entire boulevard system as well as provide answers and visualize the interventions at a smaller scale that can directly impact its potential users. Through images, diagrams and drawings we want to know what are those soft or hard, big or small, temporary or permanent interventions that can reactivate and reset the Boulevard System of Chicago."

The 2010 earthquake worsened an already fractured social, economic and ecological condition in Haiti. The challenges in rebuilding are many, but with it comes the opportunity to propose new ideas. This ideas competition seeks to collect design proposals of varying scales aimed at addressing complex problems.

New Competition Gives Young Architects and Designers a Forum to Discuss New Ideas and Perspectives. The competition invites young architects and designers to share their portfolios and philosophies with an esteemed panel of judges. Two talented winners will be awarded with a public forum and the rare opportunity to share their perspective on what architecture is with the design community.

A long-standing question that seems to have arisen in recent days due to discussions on Ecological Urbanism, coupled with a reconnection to the Landscape Urbanism bibliography.  I've also recently rescued my book collection from storage - so have an opportunity to look specifically at some of the pertinent literature to glean what we could consider a 'working list' of projects that make up a coherent body of landscape urbanism.  Is Wikipedia correct in stating that "...most of the important projects related to this theory have yet to be built, so design competitions have been an influential stage for the development of the theory." Or is there something of substance out there.

:: Parc de la Villette Entry - OMA - image via OMA

For instance, again from Wikipedia (i know not the most definitive source - but I'm greasing the skids here) lists four 'projects' in the listing for Landscape Urbanism.

• Fresh Kills Landfill Competition, Field Operations/James Corner
• Downsview Park Competition, all finalist entries
• Parc de la Villette Competition, OMA entry/Rem Koolhaas
• Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, West 8/Adriaan Geuze

Three of these are competition entries, including the unbuilt concepts for Downsview Park and the OMA/Koolhaas entry for Parc de la Villette (the built entry being that of Tschumi).  Another competition entry that is often referenced, the Field Operations/James Corner design for Fresh Kills Landfill - is a long-term implementation that is technically in process, but may be years before it is realized. Finally, a surprising entry (I think, not due to the project but that I've never heard this associated with LU before) is Schouwburgplein, a wonderfully interactive plaza in  Rotterdam by West 8/Adriann Geuze.



:: Schouwburgplein - image via West 8

So two questions:
1. What are the elements required for a work of landscape urbanism ?
(i.e. scale, context, key concepts, necessary elements, temporality, products, etc.)

2. What projects would you consider a valid work of landscape urbanism?
(as opposed to, or differentiated from a work of another discipline: architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, planning, ecology, etc.)


:: Downsview - The Digital and the Coyote - Tschumi - image via Downsview 

Again, it may be one of those conceptual culs-de-sac involving the fuzzy distinction between a priori (conceptually defined) and a posteriori knowledge (proven through experience) and trying to retroactively apply intent versus finding those projects designed using a specific theoretical approach.  In fact, I suspect that may be the case, but it's worth exploration. And, as there are folks actively designing under the guise of LU - what is the product, historical or contemporary that explains the concept in physical form?

Check out the finalists for the Build a Better Burb competition. Not that Long Island is your typical burb, but some interesting ideas to chew on. Also available is voting on the finalists for People's Choice Award.

The 72 Hour Urban Action Project is an international rapid architecture and design festival. Defined by community needs, a deadline, a tight budget and limited space the competition invites teams of architects, students, designers, artists and craftspeople to respond to community needs. Selected teams will have three days to plan and realize their projects. Selected projects will remain on site permanently. Winners will be selected by a professional jury.

ArchMedium is hosting a competition to design a new Olympic museum in Athens, dedicated to protect and remember historical the games' moments. The site is surrounded by work representative of ancient Greek culture most notably the Acropolis. The competition is open to all undergraduate students of Architecture and related fields as well as graduate students, whose undergraduate degree is not older than 3 years.

Registration ends: September 15, 2010
Submission deadline: September 30, 2010

First prize: €2000, a one-year subscription to ON Design magazine & more

An interesting competition and potential for installation is Sukkah City. A recent email from one of the co-organizers Joshua Foer explains the concept: "...it aims to radically reinvent the original green building: the sukkah. The sukkah is an ephemeral, elemental structure traditionally erected by Jews for one week each fall. Its ancient design constraints require that it have a roof made of shade-providing plants or trees, through which one can see the stars. Sukkah City will be a visionary village of 12 radically experimental sukkahs put up for three days this fall in Union Square Park, NYC."


:: A typical modern Sukkah - image via Beliefnet

Adding to the complexity of these interventions are a series of 'rules' that guide development, based on what amounts of ancient building codes such as "A sukkah may be built on top of a camel." or the more distinct: "A whale may be used to make a sukkah's walls. Also a living elephant." More pragmatics revolve around structural components like: "The sukkah must have at least 3 walls, but the third doesn't need to be complete. The walls must remain unshaken by a steady wind."


:: image via Sukkah City

The most intriguing element with the blending of architecture and landscape is the idea of the vegitectural roof made "...shade-providing plants or trees, through which one can see the stars." This can be interpreted in simple ways, with a covering of materials called s'chach using woven bamboo or palm leaves - keeping remaining openings for starlight viewing.


:: image via Wikipedia

The variations of course encompass the fully vegetated, such as these partially and fully vegetated varieties.


:: image via Israeli Museum Jerusalem


:: image via St. Marks Oakland

With a broadly interpreted rulebook and innate program of ephemerality, the entries should be an interesting mix - all juried by a pretty esteemed cast for determining winners. Entries are due on August 1, with installation of a dozen winning entries in in Union Square Park on September 19-21.

Winners of the international competition „FLOW“ arrived via an email today. The european competition is: "... for students in the last two years of architecture, engineer, art, landscape, town planning, sociology and young architects were born after December 31st, 1975 in Europe."



The subject area of the competition is the City of Brussels, covering the port area and the canal in the center of the City: "This competition of ideas aims to enable participants to propose an innovative and daring architectural project which simultaneously envisages the environmental, social, technical and economic dimensions involved. The objective of the contest is to reflect on future new lifestyles and organisations, to prefigure them and to overturn mentalities, which will make it possible to provoke reflections between the private and public sector."

Student First prize: S1 Mutations
School : UNIFE (Italy) Alessandro Bellini, Jacopo Casolai

"The complexity of the problems encountered facing the competition and the dimensional matter of the canal in Brussels, encouraged us to seek out a programmatic approach. This will provide some guidelines disregarding, for the first time, the real architectural intervention.

A lot of documents and open questions involve the European Capital and specifically its 14 km canal: starting from that amount of informations and from the specific FLOW competition's requests we draw up a critical MANIFESTO in ten points. This document underline the canal's points of weakness and possible courses of actions, and suggest a method, called induced mutations, which is able to generate more and more well-framed urban transformations."

VIDEO 1 MANIFESTO from alessandro bellini on Vimeo.

Young Professional First prize: P7 The line
(Deutschland) Marine Miroux, Christoph Hager, Ingo Hüller, Demian Rudaz

La Ligne from Marine Miroux on Vimeo.

Check out all of the entries on the website. I think the idea of the videos as part of competition deliverables are a great idea - as it allows the static imagery to coalesce into a more complete narrative which aids in understanding the specifics.

In addition to being named on the top 10 list in Fast Company's Most Innovative Architecture Companies (the only LA on the list) and the major success of the High Line, a couple of recent wins have pushed James Corner Field Operations fully from the realm of the theoretical provocateur, to competition all-star to full-fledged big name landscape architecture project powerhouse.


:: image via LA Times

The Fast Company article included the likes of DS+R, MVRDV, Kieran Timberlake, and Santiago Caltrava, and mentioned the firms most visible work to date: "James Corner's New York-based landscape architecture firm led the design team that transformed the High Line, an abandoned elevated railway track on Manhattan's west side, into a wildly successful public park. Up next: revitalizing Philadelphia's Race Street Pier."


:: Race Street Pier - 'The Slice' - image via Plan Philly

In addition, there has been copious press related to Field Operations' design proposals for Cleveland's Public Square. As mentioned on Design Under Sky: "James Corner, of Field Operations and High Line Park fame have worked directly with two nonprofit organizations, Parkworks and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance. Corner offers three radically different designs to the square. Deemed, The Frame, The Forest, and The Thread, the concepts address traffic and circulation matters to different extremes, while all providing elements of urban park goodiness."




:: images via Design Under Sky

Two recent additions to the portfolio, spotted via World Landscape Architect, announce some more high-profile commissions for Atlanta and Santa Monica. The first includes design for the 22-mile Atlanta Beltway, which, according to The Dirt, Field Operations and "...Perkins+Will have been selected as the lead designers of the Atlanta Beltline, a 22-mile green beltway of park networks, multi-use trails and light rail, which will also reuse and revitalize old rail tracks and restore local ecosystems. "


:: image via The Dirt

The last is annoucement from the LA Times that Field Operations "...has prevailed in a high-powered design competition for a 7-acre park in the heart of the Santa Monica Civic Center". An interesting addition is the makeup of some of the teams, which included some big name architecture firms. "Of the six competitors for the park job, Field Operations was the only one without an architecture firm attached. It beat out entrants including Frank Gehry and a team made up of landscape architect Peter Walker and architect Frederick Fisher."

The trend towards high-profile park design featuring architects may begin to change as some high-profile LA firms gain the credibility to go it alone. And to show that the firm isn't doing quite everything in the US, and are maybe a bit busy with the current workload - Field Operations was conspicuously absent from the list of finalists for the St. Louis Gateway Arch Design competition, leaving room for a number of other high-profile LAs as team leads or team members.

This who's who of designers in St. Louis should produce some interesting ideas and inevitably a great concept, but I really think competitions that don't rely on great ideas submitted in anonymity - such as this one with an open qualifications process that made it easy to pick the big names - limit opportunities for any new faces to appear. It's less a competition than a high-profile RFQ.

Isn't the competition a chance for the new rising stars to shine? Instead of reinforcing the current roster of stars that get visible and notable work worldwide, how about using the competition for tapping into potential. If big firms when - they do so on merit of ideas, not just reputation. Just look what that model did for Field Operations in the first place?

The Lisbon Architecture Triennale is hosting an International Competition: A House in Luanda: Patio & Pavilion. The aim of the competition is to design a single family dwelling that is radically cheap to build and that is suited to the cultural, economic and social circumstances of the area of Luanda, a city which is undergoing an intense process of transformation.

d3 has announced the winners of the Housing Tomorrow design competition. The competition called for transformative solutions that advance sustainable thought, building performance, and social interaction through research and study of environmental geometries, social behaviors, urban implications, and programmatic flows.

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Pandora Park Community Garden Society is hosting an international design competition to design a Green Shed. The competition is open to student and professional architects, landscape architects, builders, engineers, gardeners and designers of all kinds. The goal of this international competition is to generate buildable designs for a storage shed and outdoor common space for a new community garden that will showcase sustainable building strategies and materials.

The winning design will be built by a team of volunteers over the summers of 2010.

I was not terribly impressed by the collective productivity of last years Reburbia competition. There were highlights, but one was left wondering what all the fuss was about - and if these short, open-ended festivities were worth the attention. One exception in terms of ideas is the Urban Sprawl Repair Kit (via Inhabitat) by Galina Tahchieva offers a toolbox for transformation of ubiquitous fast-food restaurants, strip developments and big boxes that dot the suburban landscape.


:: image via Inhabitat

The proposal "...offers a simple set of infill techniques that are every bit as practical as they are effective at eliminating suburban sprawl. Using renewable technologies and energy-efficient practices, strip centers and big-box stores can be converted into solar-powered recycling centers, restaurant parking lots become mixed-use commercial centers, and McMansions are transformed into multi-resident senior housing."

While some of the visions are less convincing (such as the gas station infill), many are brilliant in their simplicity, such as the big box strip store, which drops new building forms along the street frontage to create a more inviting storefront and a central plaza, which is a lot more appealing within and from outside than it's predecessor. It also incorporates a significant densification of suburbia by layering additional GSF into the existing footprint.


:: image via Inhabitat

Another worthy example is the fast food restaurant, which is often non-descript and surrounded by a sea of parking. The addition of a street frontage (that is double-loaded) around the perimeters provides the ability for the larger building to 'anchor' a more mixed use of buildings and provide a more desirable face to the adjacent street.


:: image via Inhabitat

While the idea of how to transform these spaces is worthy of attention, there are some more broad-based urbanist questions that need to be addressed. As a site scale, there are options, but do the larger land-use, zoning, transportation, economic, and (sub)urban forces provide the context for these to be viable solutions? As the automobile becomes less prominent, we will need these tools... the next stage is to envision the larger, and much more difficult prospect of putting into motion the underlying mechanisms to make these realistic opportunities.