World War I Memorial Design CompetitionSponsor: WW I Centennial Commission, Washington, DC Location: Washington, DC, USA Type: Open, 2 stage Eligibility: Stage I of this Design Competition is an open, international competition, open to any professionals, university-level students, or any other interested participants who register and pay the required submission fee. A participant may be an individual, a team of individuals, or a firm. Participants in Stage II will be required to have an office located in the United States and a license in architecture or landscape architecture issued by a licensing authority in the United States. Participants who are invited to participate in Stage II who do not hold such a license or U.S. office will be required to associate with a firm or individual who meets these requirements. Process: The competition will be conducted in two stages. Stage I will be an open call to submit design concepts for the memorial. The Jury will select three to five finalists. In Stage II, the Participants will evolve their design concepts for the memorial and present their designs to the Jury. Fee: $100 Awards: Those individuals or teams that are invited to participate in Stage II of this Design Competition become eligible to receive a $25,000 Honorarium. The Honorarium will be paid upon submission of a design concept in accordance with the Mandatory Requirements for Stage II. There is no compensation for Stage I Participants. Timetable: 21 July 2015 – Stage I design entries due 4 August 2015 – Announcement of selected Stage II participants 2 December 2015 – Stage II design submittals due 20 January 2016 – Announcement of selected design/design team Jury: The Jury is comprised of individuals representing a broad range of disciplines and including perspective on the military, military history and commemoration, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning, and arts and culture. Â Design Challenge:Â Congress has authorized the World War I Centennial Commission to enhance the existing Pershing memorial by constructing on Pershing Park “appropriate sculptural and other commemorative elements, including landscaping.” The objective of this design competition is to transform Pershing Park from a park that happens to contain a memorial to a site that is primarily a national World War I memorial, within a revitalized urban park setting with a distinct sense of place that complements the memorial purpose while attracting visitors, workers, and residents of the District of Columbia. The memorial should honor and commemorate the service of American forces in World War I with sufficient scale and gravity that the memorial takes its place within the larger network of memorials and monuments situated on and around the National Mall. At the same time, designers should forge functional and perceptual linkages to the pathways, streets, and civic spaces and architectural landmarks around the site. Design and landscape elements should contribute to the park composition and strengthen the park’s relationship to the larger urban context, while complementing, and not detracting from, the meaning of the commemorative elements (whether new or pre-existing) within the site. For more information, go to: http://www.worldwar-1centennial.org/competition-overview.html |
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/  Aerial view of site – Courtesy National Finnish Museum When major cultural institutions in Finland plan a new building project, one can almost always assume that an open competition will be the vehicle by which the client settles on the building’s design. The only question is, will this be organized in a format open to local, Scandinavian, or international architects. In the case of the National Museum of Finland annex competition, it was open to architects throughout the world — resulting in 185 entries. Read more…
The Opening of Taichung’s Central Park by Catherine Mosbach/Philippe Rahm
 View from the south with downtown Taichung in the distance image: ©Mosbach/Rahm
The abandonment and closing of airports, including decommissioning those that were used for military purposes, has presented design communities with several opportunities to convert them entirely to civilian purposes. Notable among those which have been the result of competitions are Orange County Great Park, Irvine, California (Ken Smith Landscape Architects), The Estonian National Museum (Dan Dorell, Lina Ghotmeh and Tsuyoshi Tane), and Toronto’s less successful Downsview Park competition, whereby the winning design by OMA, with trees as the primary feature, has been basically ignored. Instead, the area has become the site of numerous commercial and residential projects.
Read more…
SMAR’s Winning Entry Gets the Green Light  Image: ©SMAR Architecture The winning competition entry in the 2016 Science Island competition in Kaunas, Lithuania by SMAR Architects may only take five years to realize—from the date of the competition to completion. This is encouraging news, as the duration of such projects resulting from a competition can often take much longer—sometimes up to 8-10 years. Read more…  Night view of the memorial tapestry from Independence Avenue, with Gehry’s sketch of the Normandy cliffs. Explaining the contributions of a World War II hero and later President of the United States on a very modest site on Independence Avenue just off the Washington Mall is tantamount to asking an author to describe the life of this person in no more than one paragraph. But on September 17th, after a long and bumpy journey, lasting almost 20 years and navigating a warren of the DC approval processes and public scrutiny, the Eisenhower Memorial finally was dedicated and opened to the public. Designed by Frank Gehry, it has received mixed reviews, the majority being more positive. But most have pointed out that the memorial is more impressive at night than in full daylight. This is due primarily to the illumination of an almost block-long metallic tapestry—featuring a sketch by Gehry, which depicts his interpretation of the cliffs of the Normandy coastline where the Americans landed on D-Day. Read more…  Professional winner: Brooklyn Bridge Forest (image © Pilot Projects Design Collective) While looking for new adventures on a visit to New York City, friends suggested that I take time to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge—certainly a New York icon. For those intending to undertake this trek across the bridge for the first time, the bridge consists of layers, with a large platform for pedestrians on top of a lower level for cars and the metro system. Traversing this connection for the first time between Manhattan and Brooklyn is not just about getting from one place to another, but experiencing a great scenic view of both boroughs and occasionally interacting with other bridge crossers. As for the latter, they provide a flavor of the city’s demographics, as opposed to similar experiences one might have of the city’s inhabitants when riding the city’s subway system. Read more… |