Lagi 2020: Fly RanchDesign 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 |
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). 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/ Architecture as a Unifying Concept  1st Place – UNStudio Image: ©Aerial image: ©die developer Projektentwicklung GmbH As attractive as some of our most famous towers might appear, they do have a serious downside according to some observers: ‘they suck the life out of the street.’ This has not gone unnoticed, as some cities have required setbacks as partial solutions. Two Mies Van Der Rohe projects, New York’s Seagram Building and the Toronto-Dominion Centre are prime examples of this concept. More recently the recognition that landscaping can provide some breathing space has become quite the fashion. Competitions are now replete with competitors who insist that the surrounding green environment does not stop at the front door. One of the most obvious in recent history is Elizabeth de Portzamparc’s competition winning entry for the Taichung Tower 2 competition in Taiwan. 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. Read more…  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. 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. 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