Black Rock City Planning CompetitionSponsor: Black Rock City Ministry of Urban Planning
Location: Block Rock City, Nevada, USA Type: Open, international, two stage Timeline: 31 December 2015 – stage one submission deadline Design Challenge: If you had a chance to design Black Rock City, what would you build? Participatory art is what makes Burning Man such a unique and amazing event. Â The Black Rock City Ministry of Urban Planning was founded with the goal of enabling people to share and discuss ideas for the spatial and geometric possibilities for Black Rock City and regional events, and to give architects and urban designers a platform to participate more directly in this process. Design competitions such as this are a familiar format in these trades, and as such, are an efficient way to get lots of ideas on the table for consideration. Â In the upcoming competition, entrants are invited to submit designs within three basic categories: - Individual design elements : boulevards, roundabouts, street lights, all of the things that are part of a city scape that can be incorporated into larger scale plans. Have an idea for a park, or a winding boulevard? Submit this as a design element.
- Conforming city plans : these are large scale city plans that make adaptations to the existing time + named street coordinate system without altering the fundamental character of the plan. The objective with this type of plan is to make asthetic or practical improvements to what’s already in place, for example by adding pedestrian boulevards (think Las Ramblas in Barcelona).
- Non-conforming city plans : here we explore BRC, or a regional event city, as an imagined or science fictional space, and invite people to submit radically new configurations for the city.
The output of the competition will be the Big Book of Ideas, a collection of the entries, along with public voting data and comments. This will be published online and shared with BRC city planners, as well as regional event organizers (this is an independent non-commercial effort, entrants retain copyright to their work). The submissions will also be included in an on playa exhibition with each competition cycle. Ultimately, BRC city planners will decide what gets built, as there are significant logistics and safety issues to contend with in accommodating 70,000 people in a temporary city, but the goal is to create an ongoing process for public feedback that allows the city plan to incorporate ideas, at the micro and macro level, from urban designers worldwide.  For more information, go to: http://brcmup.org/meet-brc-15 |
Perkins & Will
Carrying the label, “Artistic Ideas Competition,” five firms vied for a commission to design a new National Museum of the U.S. Navy. Household names, the five were
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) Copenhagen/ New York
Gehry Partners (Los Angeles)
DLR Group (Columbus, OH)
Perkins&Will (Chicago) Winner!
Quinn Evans (Ann Arbor) With a site not yet identified, it is possible that a final design will look quite different from the present submission. the Navy has expressed a preference for M Street SE and 6th Street SE, near the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. 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/ Six Firms Competed to Rethink the Future of a Major Museum 
Aerial view of winning design ©Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos (courtesy Malcolm Reading Consultants)
The history of the Dallas Museum of Art’s expansion has been punctuated by several moves, culminating in a new building designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes in 1984. The importance of this move to a new, somewhat desolate location in the city cannot be underestimated: it has led to the revitalization of what is now called the “Arts District,” with the relocation of various arts institutions to new facilities: the opera house (Foster and Partners), Dee and Charles Wyly Performing Arts Theater (REX/OMA), Nasher Sculpture Center (Renzo Piano), and I.M. Pei’s Meyerson Symphony Center being among the most significant. Read more… 
Courtesy Malcolm Reading Consultants, ©Kengo Kuma & Associates
A UNESCO World Heritage Site Again on the World Stage How does one approach a challenge when creating a design worthy of a park with a history dating back to antiquity? This was what four design teams faced when shortlisted for the design of a Visitor Center for the Butrint National Park in Albania. The park’s history is illuminating in this regard.
Read more…
Chungji National Heritage Museum Competition
Image ©Ona Architects + Jongjin Lee architects + Laguillo Arquitectos
For those unfamiliar with Korean Heritage and its symbols, the choice of the jury for a new complex to house artifacts, now located at various scattered sites, would seem to beg more information, especially when one views the designs of the non-selected finalists—all quite modern. Some of this can certainly be explained by the subject matter of the new museum’s holdings, another by the site in broader terms. Some might say that emphasis placed on the heritage element in the design brief fostered an interpretation leading to the choice of the winning design: “The site chosen for the new Chungji National Museum is logical: Chungju, located in the central part of the Korean Peninsula, is the center of the so-called ‘Jungwon culture,’ which has played an important role geographically and historically since ancient time. Jungwon culture developed around the Namhan River, which runs through the central region from east to west, and the relics showing this are currently scattered and stored in various museums.”
Read more… University of Florida’s College of Design Construction and Planning’s New Addition 
Development phase image courtesy ©Brooks + Scarpa
If architects have had one complaint concerning the planning and realization of a project, it has been with planners and especially construction managers, both of whom often display a lack of knowledge about architecture. The survival of a well-conceived design can hang in the balance when there is a knowledge gap at the planning and realization end.
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