Spontaneous Architecture Mini-competitions

Jan 2010

By Sebastian J — Filed under: Competitions , Columbia University, Spontaneous Architecture

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The Spontaneous Architecture mini-competitions are a series of twelve monthly competitions to last throughout 2010. The entries are single images, and the entry fee is $5 per entry. The competition winners will be decided by fellow competition entrants (although no entrant may vote for their own proposal).

This collective voting will harness the group’s intelligence and interests and hopefully catalyze a discussion within the participating group which will be formally continued in a live event in New York City. The event will be held in collaboration with Columbia University’s Studio-X in downtown Manhattan and will coincide with the announcement of the competition winner(s).

They have recently launched the first one. Details, after the break.

New Year’s Day 2010. Welcome to the future. Y2K is ten years behind us, and 2012 is at our doorstep.

The promises and terrors of our previously projected futures have both manifest and been forgotten. We are not living in a world of flying cars, intergalactic civilian travel, hovercraft skateboards, or robot assistants. No, but we have real-time video chat, the Hubble telescope, maglev trains, and smart phones. We are not living in the wasteland aftermath of nuclear war, but global warming is melting the arctic.

Images of our present future have historically been either utopian or dystopic. The technologies that were going to save us or destroy us have arguably done both to some degree, creating our greatest problems and our most significant solutions. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before and fewer critical tools to navigate that information with discrimination. We are more connected through our myriad telecommunications and more disconnected due to a growing class divide. The future is more complex than could’ve been predicted. It is more nuanced and diverse than Huxley, Orwell, Le Corbusier, or Nostradamus knew.

Times of crisis and calamity, like today, always put ideas in high demand: big ideas and big dreams to foster the next wave in invention and innovation on our way toward tomorrow.

We are living in what has historically been the future. Now that we are here, what is next? What is our future? This an open call for visionaries.

Answers to this question can take many forms: renderings of future imagined cities, advertisements, photographs, collages, maps, etcetera. There are no limits on content, only limits on format. All submissions must be formatted as a single letter sized (8.5 inch by 11 inch) landscape image, which contains no more than 100 words of text.

You have two weeks to respond. Submission closes at 11:59PM EST on January 15th, 2010.

For more information, please go to the competition’s official website.

Cite:
Jordana , Sebastian . "Spontaneous Architecture Mini-competitions" 09 Jan 2010. ArchDaily. Accessed 10 Feb 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/46039>