LA+ Iconoclast CompetitionSponsor: LA+ Journal; Penn Design
Type: Open, International, Ideas
Location: New York City
Language: English
Eligibility: Open to students and professionals of any discipline. Entries may be made by individuals and teams of up to three (3) people.
Fee: USD $60
Awards:
US $20,000 total prize money
• 5 winners to receive US$4,000, a certificate, and publication in LA+ Journal’s LA+ ICONOCLAST issue
• 10 honorable mentions to receive a certificate and publication in LA+ Journal’s LA+ ICONOCLAST issue
Timeline:
10 October 2018 – Submission Deadline
27 November 2018 – Winners announced Jury:
• Richard Weller – Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania
• Jenny B. Osuldsen – Partner and director of Snøhetta
• Charles Waldheim – John E. Irving Professor and Director, Office for Urbanization at Harvard University Graduate School of Design
• Lola Sheppard – Founding partner of Lateral Office and Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada
• Geoff Manaugh – Freelance writer, author of the New York Times-bestselling book A Burglar’s Guide to the City (2016), and former director of Studio-X NYC
• Beatrice Galilee – Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Design Challenge: LA+ ICONOCLAST asks you to redesign New York’s Central Park, which has been fictionally devastated by eco-terrorists. Central Park is arguably the canonical work of modern landscape architecture. Its aesthetic and socio-political ideals of health, beauty and democracy underpin the profession of landscape architecture, which Olmsted first named, to this day. Writing of the park in 1973, the artist Robert Smithson claimed that Olmsted “combined both art and reclamation in Central Park in a way that is truly in advance of his times.” But what would Olmsted do today? What will you do? This competition asks that you redesign Central Park, starting, as Olmsted and Calvert Vaux did, from scratch. In doing so this competition seeks to explore the following questions: 1) If in parks, no matter how faux or superficial, we manifest a collective aesthetic expression of our relationship with the “natural” world, then what, on the occasion of nature’s disappearance, is the aesthetic of that relationship today? 2) What is the role of a large urban park today? 3) How might issues of aesthetics on the one hand and performance on the other coalesce into what Olmsted described as “a single work of art”? 4) Given the extraordinary history of the Central Park site, the competition asks how the new interprets the old, and how together, the new and the old anticipate the future. In short, the brief is to create the concept for a new, 21st century Central Park. The brief asks for a plan, a short explanatory text, and discretionary supporting imagery. The competition favors conceptual rigor and imagination, and places a premium on engagement with the questions outlined above. Basic issues of feasibility, materiality, circulation, and programming will also be taken into consideration by the jury. |
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… 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/
Image Courtesy Network Rail
From Grand Central Station to King’s Cross in London, railway stations have often represented some of the major architectural accomplishments of our times. But those edifices have been primarily located in great cities. In the U.K. there are over 2,000 stations located in medium-sized, small, and rural communities. Most of those are ‘quick stop’ locations, and not the destination terminals where space requirements often result in state of the art design. In July of last year, U.K.’s Network Rail, in collaboration with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) launched a competition to identify a concept for a design that would be suitable for the medium to small-sized rail stations, at the same time updating the program to fit the modern needs of such a facility. The competition was open internationally and received 213 entries from 34 countries last September. Read more… The Urban Confluence Silicon Valley Competition
Urban Confluence Silicon Valley winner: ©SMAR Architecture Studio
After several stops and starts over an extended period of time, the winner of the Urban Confluence Design Competition was named in early March, 2021. SMAR Architecture Studio’s The Breeze of Innovation, which prevailed over two other shortlisted finalists from the original 963 entries, won with a novel tower-like structure consisting primarily of hundreds of rods, generating energy while swaying in the wind. Read More…
Pedestrian perspective
The result of an effort from a professor at the TUM (Technische Universität München) to restore the Budludzha Monument in Bulgaria, located in a remote location on a mountain top in that country, we discovered that it originally was the result of a 1959 design competition won by the young Bulgarian architect, Georgi Stoilov. Read more… A Flawed Plan Leads to Budget Issues
Competition rendering of project looking south to Mies museum ©Herzog de Meuron
Once considered on the forefront of modern architecture in post-WWII Europe, Berlin has had its share of questionable decisions concerning important urban projects in recent history. Beginning with the rebirth of the Berlin Palace (Humboldt Forum) on the Spree by Italian architect, Franco Stella, and now followed by Herzog de Meuron’s controversial addition to Mies’s 20th Century Art Museum, the times when one could look to Berlin as a signpost of architectural innovation can only be viewed in the rear view mirror.
Read more… |
