“BRIDGING”: Yongxin Old City Wenxing Bridge Renewal Plan
Sponsor: Yongxin County People’s Government, Yongxin, China
Media support: Urban Environment Design (UED) magazine
Type: International, ideas, one-stage
Language: English
Fee: None
Eligibility: Students and design professionals
Timetable:
1 September 2020 – Registration deadline
15 September 2020 – Submission deadline
Q&A will only be responded to via the below email address.
Site: Located on the western border of Jiangxi, Yongxin County is a famous general county in the country and the center of the Hunan and Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Jinggangshan Revolutionary Base. Yongxin embodies its unique gene of “rich humanity, red history and beautiful ecology”. However, the development of the old city, like many other counties in China, is facing numerous issues such as slow economic development, lack of industrial vitality, gradual brain drain, urgent needs to improve the infrastructure and city’s appearance. Therefore, how to protect, inherit and take full advantage of Yongxin’s rich and unique cultural resources and historical genes are both challenging and promising for the development of Yongxin in the new era. In this context, taking the features and culture of Yongxin Old City as the carrier, guided by design, culture and art, Yongxin Old City has carried out practical operation to solve difficulties as well as future-oriented renovation and transformation through events, communities and industries. Attaching a spatial value to Yongxin Old city via culture revival, environmental improvement, affluent life and model setting. The city will finally realize its renewal plan through the endeavor such as creating an old city regeneration model, reviving the old city’s culture, reconstructing the ancient city ecological circle, consolidating the ancient city industrial foundation.
Awards:
1st Prize – 300,000RMB (before tax, about USD42,000)
2nd Prize – 200,000RMB (before tax, about USD28,000)
3rd Prize – 100,000RMB (before tax, about USD14,000)
Note: The prize-winning entries will have the opportunity to negotiate for their implementation in Yongxin County.
Jury: To be determined
Design Challenge:
“BRIDGING” Yongxin Old City Wenxing Bridge International Design Competition not only aims to connect the physical space on both sides of the river, but also focus on connecting the old city culture and people’s life, linking the new and old urban areas, and activating the blocks and landscape belts on both sides of the river. The competition takes “BRIDGE-COMPLEX” as the theme, transcends the conventional “bridge” functions of transportation and tourism, strives for the “bridge” design with a variety of possibilities and implementation. “Building” (refers to Linjiang Building) as an important node will be integrated, linking the life and space of both banks, further would enrich the modern typology content of “bridge”. The competition focuses on promoting the old city’s renewal plan with the mode of “BRIDGE-COMPLEX”, creating a new local “bridge” life of the old city, taking it as the generator of urban spirit and cultural life, cultivating new urban characteristics, and providing rich and vivid new perspectives, new stages and new highlights for the future life of the old city.
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:
In early 2020, a group advocating a new approach to the design of the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA)—The Citizens’ Brigade to Save LACMA—organized a competition to counter an existing design by the Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor. Already commissioned by the LACMA administration, the project is slated to begin almost immediately with the demolition of four LACMA buildings—three existing and one new. Moreover, the existing plan to incorporate all of the existing collections under one roof isn’t covered by the Zumthor plan. This obvious lack of exhibit space was the focus of a query by the Ahmanson Foundation, a major donor of artworks to LACMA in the past. Upon not receiving assurances from LACMA that those donated works would be exhibited, but possibly held in storage and hidden from public view, the Foundation cut all ties with LACMA. Finally, the plan by Zumthor foresees the new structure not only occupying much of the new space created by demolition, but extends part of the new building over Wiltshire Boulevard. As one might anticipate from Zumthor, the construction of the structure is also primarily of concrete, thereby raising the cost per SF. So no matter how highly finished this material turns out to be, it does in essence represent a brutalist structure replacing an eclectic ensemble.
If one were to search for a railway museum in the U.K., London would seem to be an obvious choice. But, as it happens, its location is in the northeastern city of York, far from the major cultural and economic centers of the country. But despite its distance from the major metropolitan areas to the south and west, York has managed to become the focal point of research into the history of rail in the U.K., supplemented by a major museum. Here we are not just talking about some posters, but sheds replete with a large collection of vintage trains.
Foundation non-profits are no strangers to good architecture. Ford Foundation’s forward-looking headquarters in New York City by Roche Dinkeloo was an early example of a non-profit using architecture as a vehicle for serving to brand it as a progressive institution. In 2001 the California Endowment went one step further, staging an invited competition for their new headquarters in Los Angeles.
Master plans have been around for ages; but master plans for very large cities with all their support systems are relatively new. Milton Keynes (MK), located in Buckinghamshire in southern England, and begun in the late 1960s, is one of the most successful of the new cities, now having a population of almost 250,000. Its success lies mainly on the lessons learned from the establishment of the planning which generated the new towns in the U.K. during the 1940s and 50s, many of which have not fared well in the test of time. MK’s success was based primarily on the careful separation of high density from residential where the influence of the “garden city” could be seen. Here the idea of a live/work environment was even incorporated.
The updating and modernization of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport has been well overdue. Aside from occasional problems caused by Chicago’s winter storms, congestion at the airport has led air travelers to avoid the airport when catching a connecting flight is on the agenda. So Chicago, noted for its modern architecture and the home of several high-profile architecture firms, decided to turn to an invited competition for a solution to these issues.
Competitions in Chicago in the recent past have been anything but encouraging, especially when transparency is an issue. During the competition for the Obama Center on the South Side, the Obama Foundation, which was responsible for the administration of that “competition,” was anything but a model of transparency; and to this day, none of the finalist designs, other than that of the winner, have seen the light of day. In the case of the O’Hare project, videos submitted by the five finalists teams were on public display, and the public was even asked to vote for their favorite.
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