2020 Annual is here!

• 2020 Annual now available in PDF format Look inside.

• Half price on 2011, 2012,    2013,  2014, and 2015 Annuals.

Recent Competitions

Don’t miss these on-going open competitions, now posted to the website:

• 2025 Osaka Expo Korea Pavilion

• Prequalification Opportunity for Construction Contract – New U.S. Embassy in Juba, South Sudan

• Weissenhof Urban Planning Competition:
Seeking Strategies for Further Development

• Edible, Or the Architecture of Metabolism

• Metals in CONSTRUCTION MAGAZINE

The Rural Countryside as Classroom

Countryside Dilemmas – New Rural Planning

1st Place – ©Tianjin University Team

Planning used to be at the bottom of Chinese students’ lists of design priorities. One western architect, whose firm was at the forefront in the design and implementation of numerous planning projects in China, surmised that planning was an area that received little attention in the university curricula. So when planning for a major metropolitan area has occurred, the Chinese have almost always turned to outside international firms for ideas and implementation.

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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/

Reimagining the Thompson Center

The Chicago Architecture Club Shines the Spotlight on

Another Endangered Landmark

Public Pool  Image: ©Perkins&Will
 

What do Bertrad Goldberg and Helmut Jahn have in common? Besides having high-profile buildings threatened by demolition, both served as subject matter for two competitions sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Club (CAC)—raising public consciousness about their impending fate. They both produced buildings in a city famous for its architecture that have been abandoned: Goldberg’s Future Prentice Women’s Hospital, demolished in 2014 after a valiant effort by preservationists to save it from the wrecking ball; and Jahn’s Thompson Center, now the object of a similar effort by the State of Illinois to sell it to a developer.

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High Density Housing in the Suburbs?

An Ideas Competition in Berlin Seeks Answers

Winning entry perspective Image: ©AllesWirdGut Architekten

Berlin developer HOWOGE recently staged what was regarded as a “planning Laboratory” competition for a model satellite in northwest Berlin. The brief for this invited competition noted that the urban sprawl, which had accompanied the reunification of Germany(and Berlin) in 1989, was low density in character, occupying wide swaths of suburban areas around the city. With previous high density, and now controversial Berlin projects in mind—the problems with Berlin’s high-density Gropius-Stadt as a warning signal—the sponsor here suggested that lessons learned from past mistakes could be avoided with a high-quality design strategy…

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Winner Announced for New Preston Mosque Competition

LUCA POIAN FORMS  Image courtesy RIBA

Facilitator: RIBA
Location: Preston, U.K.
Type: International, open
The competition attracted over 200 entries from 40 different countries.
Five finalists were chosen to participate in a second phase:
Winner
• LUCA POIAN FORMS, London, UK
Finalists

• BLANKPAGE Architects, Lebanon 
• Borough Architects + buchhandler-nelli + elca, Cambridge, UK
• Mcheileh Studio, New York (Highly Commended by the Evaluation Panel)
• TABE SHOURI, New York

RIBA competition website:
www.architecture.com/competitions

A Russian City Sets Its Priorities in the Public Realm

Astrakhan Looks to Raise Its Quality of Life Index

Aerial view of downtown Astrakhan

Planning competitions with a strong landscape component take many forms, including some for plazas and gateways to major town centers, city neighborhood sites with multi-story housing units, university campus plans and finally, comprehensive city plans—the latter either being for new towns, as in China, or strategies for the improvement of existing cities—as was here the case with Astrakhan, a major city on the Volga delta, and the Caspian Sea.

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