TIMBER IN THE CITY: Urban Habitat Competition International Student Design Competition
Sponsor(s): The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA); Binational Softwood Lumber Council (BSLC); School of Constructed Environments (SCE) at Parsons School of Design Type: Open, international, student Eligibility: The Timber in the City 3: Urban Habitats Competition is open to students from all ACSA member schools around the world. All student entrants are required to work under the direction of a faculty sponsor from an ACSA member school. Entries will be accepted for individual as well as team solutions. Teams must be limited to a maximum of five individuals. Awards: 1st Prize – Student $10,000, Faculty Sponsor $7,000 2nd Prize – Student $8,000, Faculty Sponsor $5,000 3rd Prize – Student $6,000, Faculty Sponsor $4,000 Timetable: 3 April 2019 – Registration Deadline 22 May 2019 – Submission Deadline
Design Challenge:
The competition challenges participants to re-imagine a vacant waterfront site in Queens, New York, as a vibrant and vanguard model of healthy, biophilic living for the future of the city.
Embracing new structural and ecological possibilities of wood construction, entrants will design a mid-rise, mixed-use complex that includes affordable housing, a large community wellness facility, and an early childhood education center, all interlaced with a new exterior public waterfront space. Entrants are challenged to propose construction systems in scenarios that draw optimally on the performance characteristics of not one but a variety of wood technologies, and are encouraged to think about the site as a testing ground for socially, materially, and environmentally progressive and innovative models of sustainable urban living.
The programs for this mixed-use development are composed to challenge students and educators to think creatively and critically about the way in which choices about building materials, and the interrelationship of interior space and the exterior environments frame long- term consequences for the health of urban environments. Housing is the largest component of the competition program and presents an opportunity to look closely at the way timber construction can be used effectively in creating buildings based on smaller cellular units. A community wellness and sports facility complements the housing, and offers larger community and collective spaces that will require larger structural spans. An early childhood education center, for children from 6 weeks to 5 years old, calls attention to the critical role these institutions play in the long-term vitality and development of a community.
The Rise in the City Housing Competition in the African country of Lesotho presented many similarities with student competitions that have occurred over the past decades, the main link being the presence of mentors as advisers to the team(s) who were designing the entries. One of the most famous examples of this was the winning design for the Vietnam Memorial Competition by Maya Lin, who was enrolled at the time in a studio course at Yale University. In that case it was also a case of students competing against professionals. Lin’s design just happened to find favor with the jury.
Form and Dichroic Light Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University Michelle LaFoe and Isaac Campbell OFFICE 52 Architecture Forward by Cesar Pelli, FAIA Introduction by Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA Leete”s Island Books, Maine USA Hard cover; 96 pages in color ISBN 9780918172709
In his introduction to Form and Dichroic LIght, Michael Crosbie never mentions the term, “wild card,” to describe Office 52’s participation in the invited competition for the Carnegie Mellon Engineering Building. The four finalists, picked from a list of 17 firms, also included three household names: ZGF, Wilson, and BCJ (Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson). So what possible chance could a firm, which had just recently opened a small office in Portland, Oregon, have against a competition lineup of this magnitude? But as OFFICE 52 Principal, Isaac Campbell explained, as a small firm, “we were quite nimble,” and the $50,000 stipend the firms all received to produce a design could allow OFFICE 52 more time to undertake the research involved than might be the case with a larger office, where a cost controller is constantly focusing on the operation.
The features of a truly international competition were quite in evidence in Prague's SMÍCHOV School search for an ideal elementary school design: the event attracted 66 entries from around the world, and the winners were a team from Canada and Poland. The sponsors went so far as to even estimate the number of hours spent by all of the architects who submitted entries for the competition (58,800). One can only imagine what that number might have been for the Helsinki Guggenheim competition, which attracted 1,715 entries.
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects (PCP) in collaboration with China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Corp Ltd. has prevailed over a strong field to win the competition for a Natural History Museum in Chengdu, China. The other finalists included Zaha Hadid Architects, Sutherland Hussey Harris, Nihon Sekkei, Valode & Pistre, and FUKSAS.
Garage Screen, a program of film screenings on contemporary art and culture, was launched in 2012 and introduces viewers to notable examples of Russian and foreign feature films, documentaries, and experimental films. Since its inception, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has selected and shown films and videos examining issues of contemporary art and culture in all their manifestations, rare documentary films on the lives and lifestyles of prominent and little-known artists, musicians, architects, and performing artists, as well as films about the creation of exhibitions and works of art.
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