Lagi 2020: Fly Ranch Design the Future of Fly Ranch
Commentary
For anyone who recalls the Black Mountain project in North Carolina from the late 1930s and mid-1940s, the Lagi 2020 Fly Ranch project in many respects is almost a carbon copy of that famous progressive initiative. Besides Walter Gropius, the Black Mountain project, which focused on the arts, had its close connection to the German Bauhaus. Besides Gropius and Marcel Breuer, who drew up plans for the construction of new buildings there (never built), Bauhaus artists such as Josef and Anni Albers and Xanti Schawinsky were teaching there. As a result, the social content of the Black Mountain project lent more than local prominence to the project.
The Lagi 2020 Fly Ranch project is a serious of competitions sponsored with the intent of raising public awareness about the environment and measures to preserve it, focusing on demonstration projects that deal in large part with energy regeneration. Because of the importance placed on the role of art in sending a strong message as to how this can be accomplished, the Lagi project in this sense does bear a resemblance to Black Mountain. Unfortunately, WWII interrupted fundraising for the construction of buildings by Gropius and Breuer, thus ending any high-profile outcome for the college. It will be interesting to see how the Fly Ranch project progresses, although located in a much less inviting environment than the location of the Black Mountain program in the mountains of North Carolina near Asheville.
View of the Lagi 2020 site ©Lagi 2020
Sponsors: Land Art Generator initiative/Burning Man Project
Type: open, one-stage
Location: Black Rock, Nevada
Fee: none
Language: English
Timeline:
31 October 2020 – Design submissions deadline
Awards: $150,000 set aside as stipends for implementation of 10 winning designs
History
Black Rock City is the oldest and largest Burning Man gathering in the world. Each August, Black Rock City is briefly home to 70,000 people in northern Nevada gathering to celebrate Burning Man. The gathering has been built in roughly the same spot every year but one since 1990. In 1997, Black Rock City moved to Fly Ranch, a 3,800 acre property just north of the normal event site.
For twenty years after that event, people imagined building a permanent home for Burning Man’s temporary community at Fly Ranch. In 2016, Burning Man Project—the non-profit that organizes the city—became the steward of Fly Ranch.
As is, Fly Ranch is an agricultural site where the only residents are 150 cows. Over the past few years, passionate people have organized nature walks, hosted small camping trips, built art, and tested temporary infrastructure. To scale the site, more infrastructure will be needed. Everyone could bring generators, bottled water, prepared food, tents, and dispose of our waste off-site. This is how most gatherings occur. But there is a different approach, where people live in service to nature and give more to the land than they take from it.
The Land Art Generator Initiative’s design challenge, LAGI 2020 Fly Ranch, aims to move Fly Ranch in that type of regenerative direction. The project invites people to propose and build infrastructure at Fly Ranch while supporting the goals in Burning Man’s environmental roadmap
Selection criteria:
• Adherence to the Design Brief;
• The integration of the work into the surrounding environment and landscape;
• The sensitivity of the work to the environment, and to local, and regional ecosystems;
• The utility of the support system(s) for Fly Ranch provided by the work (energy, water, shelter, food, and/or zero-waste). Please note, you do not need to tackle all five systems with your design;
• The way in which the work addresses visitors to Fly Ranch;
• The embodied energy required to construct the work;
• The originality and social relevance of the concept.
For more information, and to enter:
landartgenerator.org/lagi2020/LAGI2020-DesignGuidelines.pdf
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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/
Winning entry ©Herzog de Meuron
In visiting any museum, one might wonder what important works of art are out of view in storage, possibly not considered high profile enough to see the light of day? In Korea, an answer to this question is in the making.
It can come as no surprise that museums are running out of storage space. This is not just the case with long established “western” museums, but elsewhere throughout the world as well. In Seoul, South Korea, such an issue has been addressed by planning for a new kind of storage facility, the Seouipul Open Storage Museum. The new institution will house artworks and artifacts of three major museums in Seoul: the Seoul Museum of Modern Art, the Seoul Museum of History, and the Seoul Museum of Craft Art.
Read more…
Belfast Looks Toward an Equitable and Sustainable Housing Model
Birdseye view of Mackie site ©Matthew Lloyd Architects
If one were to look for a theme that is common to most affordable housing models, public access has been based primarily on income, or to be more precise, the very lack of it. Here it is no different, with Belfast’s homeless problem posing a major concern. But the competition also hopes to address another of Belfast’s decades-long issues—its religious divide. There is an underlying assumption here that religion will play no part in a selection process. The competition’s local sponsor was “Take Back the City,” its membership consisting mainly of social advocates. In setting priorities for the housing model, the group interviewed potential future dwellers as well as stakeholders to determine the nature of this model. Among those actions taken was the “photo- mapping of available land in Belfast, which could be used to tackle the housing crisis. Since 2020, (the group) hosted seminars that brought together international experts and homeless people with the goal of finding solutions. Surveys and workshops involving local people, housing associations and council duty-bearers have explored the potential of the Mackie’s site.” This research was the basis for the competition launched in 2022.
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Alster Swimming Pool after restoration (2023)
Linking Two Competitions with Three Modernist Projects
Hardly a week goes by without the news of another architectural icon being threatened with demolition. A modernist swimming pool in Hamburg, Germany belonged in this category, even though the concrete shell roof had been placed under landmark status. When the possibility of being replaced by a high-rise building, it came to the notice of architects at von Gerkan Marg Partners (gmp), who in collaboration with schlaich bergermann partner (sbp), developed a feasibility study that became the basis for the decision to retain and refurbish the building.
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A Church Ruin as Reconciliation Memorial
View of winning design from south ©Heninghan Peng Architects
For those tourists visiting Berlin today, the sudden approach to the ruins of a 1895 church building located on the city’s downtown Breitscheidplatz would certainly arouse their curiosity. One of the few remaining relics of World War II in the city, the church has now been the subject of a competition: Redesign and renovation of the Old Tower of the Friedrich Wilhelm Memorial Church (Umgestaltung des Alten Turms der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächnis-Kirche).
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