Winter Stations Design CompetitionEligibility: This is an open international competition, welcoming artists, designers, architects and landscape architects. Submission Deadline: 5 December, 2015
Design Challenge: Although the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto is a summer long festival of colour and pageantry, this is not true of the winter months. This year we begin what we hope will become an expanded annual celebration of Toronto’s winter landscape, focusing on the intersection between land and water. We are beginning with the Kew, Scarborough and Balmy Beaches located in the heart of the Beach community, broadly located south of Queen Street East, between Woodbine and Victoria Park Avenues. Located on the beach between the Leuty Lifeguard Station and the Balmy Beach Club are five evenly spaced metal life guard stands. These utilitarian structures are to be used as the armature or foundation for pieces of public art. The pieces are temporary installations and need to be able to withstand the rigours of Toronto winter weather. They are to be installed February 16, 2015 until March 20, 2015. This is an open international competition, welcoming artists, designers, architects and landscape architects. We have chosen a theme of Warmth this year. Competitors are asked to create installations anchored to the lifeguard stands which can add among other things, colour, movement and humour to the landscape. It is hoped these installations will engage the audience in a dialogue with designers and their intent. There is no limit to the size of the installation, but please note that included in the jurors instructions will be durability and constructability. Winning teams will spend time in Toronto during the last phase of construction and for the activities surrounding the opening. These events include an opening party at the Balmy Beach Club and a speaking engagement at Toronto’s Design Exchange, where the team’s entry and portfolio will be exhibited. This will provide opportunities for citizens of Toronto to engage directly with the designers, as well as to encourage the students of various design schools in the city to meet with them. Members of the design team will be expected to meet with media to explain their designs and ideas. For more information, go to: http://winterstations.com/ |
Countryside Dilemmas – New Rural Planning 
1st Place – ©Tianjin University Team
Planning used to be at the bottom of Chinese students’ lists of design priorities. One western architect, whose firm was at the forefront in the design and implementation of numerous planning projects in China, surmised that planning was an area that received little attention in the university curricula. So when planning for a major metropolitan area has occurred, the Chinese have almost always turned to outside international firms for ideas and implementation. Read more… 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/ The Chicago Architecture Club Shines the Spotlight on Another Endangered Landmark 
Public Pool Image: ©Perkins&Will
What do Bertrad Goldberg and Helmut Jahn have in common? Besides having high-profile buildings threatened by demolition, both served as subject matter for two competitions sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Club (CAC)—raising public consciousness about their impending fate. They both produced buildings in a city famous for its architecture that have been abandoned: Goldberg’s Future Prentice Women’s Hospital, demolished in 2014 after a valiant effort by preservationists to save it from the wrecking ball; and Jahn’s Thompson Center, now the object of a similar effort by the State of Illinois to sell it to a developer. Read more… 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 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… |
