Animal House: a Student Design and Scholarship CompetitionIt’s never too early to start! That might be the slogan of the Michael G. Myers Student Competition in Houston, which took place earlier this spring and was participated in by students from several of the city’s high schools. The topic of this year’s competition was “Animal House,” the challenge being to design an animal shelter on one of the city’s empty sites. This was not all that easy, as the site, although having high visibility, was triangular in shape—making it more difficult to insert the required program, while paying attention to aesthetics. 
Camilla Ramos – 1st Place Individual entry
It was pretty obvious that the participants came out of exceptional art programs in their respective schools, and one would imagine that rather intensive crit sessions had to be part of the design process.
What can we take away from all this? Challenging young students to think about improving the urban condition of our cities can’t come at too early age. And this is surely one way to accomplish that. A takeaway? If some of these students decide to enter architecture programs at the undergraduate level, many will already have a leg up on their future classmates. One can only imagine their response to some early exercises: Been there, done that! In the meantime, one might only assume that parents will turn to these young adults before settling on any major design decisions.
Jose Alvarez / Kevin Ontiveros – 1st Prize group entry
 
Fernando Luna – 2nd Prize Individual entry
Alec Miller / Meaghan Pansacola – 2nd Place Group entry
Vasily Sufuef – 3rd Place Individual entry
Alexis Toledo – 4th Place Individual entry
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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… Hightech Designs as Low- and Mid-Rise Research Models Siemens Healthineers Campus, Bengaluru 
Aerial View of site, Rendering: ©Eller + Eller Architekten
Siemens new Healthineers campus in Bengaluru, India, is hardly a milestone in the design of major R&D facilities. Although the winning design by Eller + Eller Architekten did include the necessity to go higher than the 2- to 4-story models we often find, whether in Silicon Valley, Detroit, or in Munich, the relatively small site for such a large program did ask for that campus feel, asking the competitors to focus on the interdisciplinary factor as well as sustainability and cost.
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… |
