COLDSCAPES: New Visions for Cold Weather Cities

Sponsor: Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC)

Type: open, ideas, single-stage
Eligibility: Designers
Fee: US$20
Language: English
Timetable
24 May 2013 – Registration deadline
12 July 2013 – Submission deadline
Prizes
Three $1,000 awards each
Jury
• Shane Coen (Founder and Principal of Coen+Partners, Minneapolis, Minnesota)
• Gary Toth (Director of Transportation Initiatives at Project for Public Spaces, New York City, New York)
• Aase Kari Mortensen (Senior Architect at Snøhetta, Oslo, Norway)
• Greg Peckham (Managing Director at LAND Studio, Cleveland, Ohio)
• Patrick Coleman (CEO of The Winter Cities Institute, Anchorage, Alaska)
Design Challenge:
To improve livability in cold weather cities by inspiring artists, architects, landscape architects, and urban designers to creatively engage the built environment year-round.
COLDSCAPES aims to provoke a critical assessment of idealized representations from warmer seasons and challenge designers to engage more creatively with the unique conditions presented by winter. Submissions should explore new visions and emerging possibilities for enhancing livability in cold weather cities. We’re interested in encouraging designers to inspire other designers to become cultural change agents, ultimately enabling cities to embrace their winter identities. Projects may fall within the domain of a particular discipline (architecture, public art, landscape architecture, urban design) or may cross over multiple disciplines. Entrants are encouraged to explore responses within a wide range of scales: city-scale urban form, mid-scale public spaces, or smaller street interventions. The competition does not specify a single site for submissions. Entrants may choose their own specific sites from around the world or submit proposed interventions that could be deployed in multiple geographic locations. The submission should provide an effective visual (and potentially aural, if using video) presentation of a built project or conceptual proposal that responds to critical design questions. What novel urban experiences can designers enable for winter city residents? How can the built environment become more responsive to changing outdoor conditions, enabling long-term resiliency? What visualization techniques can be employed to meaningfully communicate the ephemeral atmospheric qualities of winter environments? How can the urban environment respond to the needs of vulnerable populations in cold climates and increase opportunities for social inclusion?
Entries:
A maximum of three Images (maximum size of 1024 x 768 pixels) or Video no more than 3 minutes in length
For more information, go to:

http://www.cudc.kent.edu/cold/index.php/competition/