SHIFTboston Ideas Competition 2009Sponsor: SHIFT and The Boston Society of Architects /AIA Type: Open International Language: English Eligibility: This competition is open to all individuals and teams of all sizes. Registration fee: US$35.00 Awards:
The winning entry will receive a US$1,000.00 cash prize. The winner along with a select number of honorable mentions will be invited to attend the SHIFTboston Forum to present their work to the jury member and invited guests. The Forum will be held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston on January 14, 2010. Honored projects may be featured in publications designed and used as promotional materials for SHIFTboston. It is expected that honored projects will appear on a billboard, bus shelters and subway cars in the Boston Metropolitan area as part of the SHIFTboston Exhibit. All eligible entries will be promoted on the SHIFTboston blog and website. Timetable:
December 11, 2009 – Submissions received no later than 4:00pm EST.
December 2009 – Jury will meet.
January 14, 2010 – SHIFTboston Forum held at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Jury:
Thom Mayne – Founder and Design Director of Morphosis Architects, Santa Monica, CA
Scott Burnham – Urban Strategist, London, UK
Ana Salinas Mata – Prinicipal of Wilk-Salinas Architekten, Berlin, Germany
Mitchell Joachim, PhD – Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and Terrefuge, New York, NY
Brian Healy, AIA – Principal Brian Healy Architects, Boston, MA
Audrey O’Hagan, AIA – Principal of O’Hagan Architects, Boston, MA
Sarah Whiting, PhD – Principal of WW Architecture, Dean of the Rice University School of Architecture (January 2010)
Design Challenge:
This competition calls on all visionaries to evaluate the current status of Boston’s urban environment and submit their ideal addition or augmentation to the existing context. Help uncover the most pressing issues concerning the future of Boston and respond to them in an imaginative manner. Avoid the stereotype and everything you have seen done before; imagine what deserves to be there! What do cities provide us with? What do you believe Boston should provide? Let your idea take shape and function, and enhance the everyday setting. Make Boston thrive! Topics to explore but not limited to:
Boston – the future
Governing bodies
Human scale
Materials and technology
Energy harvesting
Symbiosis
Ecological urbanism Please be aware that these should be inventive, innovative, visionary proposals. The broader and more diverse the subjects the better. You are not limited by the ideas in this brief. This competition is designed for multiple viewpoints – architect, artist, student, government official, and citizen. This is your opportunity to share your bold urban vision. Submission Requirements:
Entries must be formatted to fit a single 24″ x 36″ (60cm x 90cm) board (landscape orientation). The board may include any drawings and three-dimensional representation of the proposed concept along with any supporting text. Inventive and multi-graphical presentations are encouraged.
For information, please visit: www.shiftboston.org or get inspired at www.shiftboston.blogspot.com. |
An Ideas Competition in Berlin Seeks Answers 
Winning entry perspective Image: ©AllesWirdGut Architekten
Berlin developer HOWOGE recently staged what was regarded as a “planning Laboratory” competition for a model satellite in northwest Berlin. The brief for this invited competition noted that the urban sprawl, which had accompanied the reunification of Germany(and Berlin) in 1989, was low density in character, occupying wide swaths of suburban areas around the city. With previous high density, and now controversial Berlin projects in mind—the problems with Berlin’s high-density Gropius-Stadt as a warning signal—the sponsor here suggested that lessons learned from past mistakes could be avoided with a high-quality design strategy… Read more… Winner Announced for New Preston Mosque Competition
LUCA POIAN FORMS Image courtesy RIBA
Facilitator: RIBA
Location: Preston, U.K.
Type: International, open
The competition attracted over 200 entries from 40 different countries.
Five finalists were chosen to participate in a second phase:
Winner
• LUCA POIAN FORMS, London, UK
Finalists - BLANKPAGE Architects, Lebanon
- Borough Architects + buchhandler-nelli + elca, Cambridge, UK
- Mcheileh Studio, New York (Highly Commended by the Evaluation Panel)
- TABE SHOURI, New York
RIBA competition website:
www.architecture.com/competitions Young Architects in Competitions When Competitions and a New Generation of Ideas Elevate Architectural Quality
by Jean-Pierre Chupin and G. Stanley Collyer
published by Potential Architecture Books, Montreal, Canada 2020
271 illustrations in color and black & white
Available in PDF and eBook formats
ISBN 9781988962047
What do the Vietnam Memorial, the St. Louis Arch, and the Sydney Opera House have in common? These world renowned landmarks were all designed by architects under the age of 40, and in each case they were selected through open competitions. At their best, design competitions can provide a singular opportunity for young and unknown architects to make their mark on the built environment and launch productive, fruitful careers. But what happens when design competitions are engineered to favor the established and experienced practitioners from the very outset? This comprehensive new book written by Jean-Pierre Chupin (Canadian Competitions Catalogue) and Stanley Collyer (COMPETITIONS) highlights for the crucial role competitions have played in fostering the careers of young architects, and makes an argument against the trend of invited competitions and RFQs. The authors take an in-depth look at past competitions won by young architects and planners, and survey the state of competitions through the world on a region by region basis. The end result is a compelling argument for an inclusive approach to conducting international design competitions. Download Young Architects in Competitions for free at the following link: https://crc.umontreal.ca/en/publications-libre-acces/ Astrakhan Looks to Raise Its Quality of Life Index
Aerial view of downtown Astrakhan
Planning competitions with a strong landscape component take many forms, including some for plazas and gateways to major town centers, city neighborhood sites with multi-story housing units, university campus plans and finally, comprehensive city plans—the latter either being for new towns, as in China, or strategies for the improvement of existing cities—as was here the case with Astrakhan, a major city on the Volga delta, and the Caspian Sea. Read more…
Image: ©wHY Architecture
Earlier this year, an article in the Architects’ Journal described what almost sounded like a death knell for wHY Architecture’s winning competition design for Edinburgh’s Ross Pavilion site. When the competition took place, some observers may have regarded wHY as a wild card, in the company of such high-profile firms as BIG and David Adjaye,* There can be no question that they understood the site and program better than their rivals, and it would have appeared that innovation had won the day. Their design could have served to rethink the way in which this site, with its replacement of an outdated bandstand by a contemporary structure, would serve as a destination for Scotland’s public—much as has been the case for Frank Gehry’s pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Read more… SWA/Balsley Wins Paveletskaya Plaza Landscape Competition
Aerial view at night – courtesy SWA/Balsley 5+ Design
Of the nine railway stations in Moscow, Paveletskaya is the largest and one of the last of those that opened around the turn of the century. Compared to other Moscow stations, Paveletskaya, designed by Alexander Krasovsky and opened in 1900, represented a lower-key presence in its sprawling configuration, similar to palaces such as a Sans Souci without the ornamentation. The original site for the recent competition included a small park facing the station, bordered on one side by the Ring Road. Post WWII, the site was bifurcated by a road, thus separating the front entrance of the station from the grassy area facing it. Read more… |
