A3+ Architects recently finished an urban renovation project in Marsala, Italy for an international competition. The project is situated in Porta Nuova, where the historical center of the city is connected to the sea by an urban road and an archeological park.
More images and more about the project after the break. read more »
Two San Francisco Bay Area housing non-profits, Suburban Alternatives Land Trust (SALT) and Northbay Family Homes (NFH) have, in the past 30 years, facilitated the building of 4,000 homes – half of them affordable to low-moderate income families. Together, SALT and NFH are sponsoring an open competition to develop ideas that optimize their site’s potential uses, including ideas that address the need for senior housing in a suburban setting.
The Project site is located in the City of Novato, Marin County in a recently developed area known as “Bahia.” Construction is planned to begin upon securing financing. Registration is until November 16 and registration is due un December 14. For more information on submission requirements, go to the official website. Seen on Bustler.
As we motor toward the future, it’s time to rethink the structure that houses our automobiles—the humble garage. Dwell’s newest contest, sponsored by Lexus, is a challenge to incorporate forward-thinking technology into a freestanding building that can hold no more than three vehicles.
Using Google SketchUp, entrants are invited to submit at least two renderings—one interior and one exterior—that illustrate the technological possibilities and sustainable potential of the garage of the future.
More information on Bustler.
The Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA), AIA NY Chapter, is pleased to announce its fourth biennial international ideas competition, High Bridge: Bronx, Building Cultural Infrastructure (HB:BX).
This competition is open to all emerging professionals, including, but not limited to, architects, artists, engineers, landscape architects, urban designers, and planners who have completed their education at the undergraduate or graduate level within 10 years of the competition announcement (September 10, 2009). The registration deadline is November 18, 2009, and the submission deadline is January 18, 2010. An online gallery will feature all submitted design entries. In addition cash prizes and inclusion in an exhibition and publication will be awarded to the winning designs.
HB:BX is an open ideas competition to design an arts center that culturally reinforces the physical connection between the Manhattan and Bronx High Bridge communities of New York City. Working in cooperation with the arts organizations Artists Unite and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, ENYA means to draw awareness to the current efforts to restore and reopen the historic High Bridge. More information on the competition’s requirements available at the official website.
Friends of 339 invites architects, designers, artists, engineers and multi-disciplinary teams worldwide to participate in a competition to re-imagine and rebuild the Peace Pentagon, located at 339 Lafayette Street in New York City. This is an opportunity to give a physical form to a name in-use since this building became the center of peace-promoting activism in the 1960’s.
They are seeking proposals that will support and expand the work of peace activists on several scales: as a financially and ecologically sustainable building, as a means of engaging with a neighborhood that has a rich history of activism and art, and as part of an influential city that can impact thinking in far away places.
Submission deadline es December 9. For more details on the requirements, go to the competition’s official website.
The Solar Decathlon 2009 competition ends tomorrow, and 7 out of 10 contests have been already completed, with Team California on the lead with the Refract House.
The results so far are:
The Solar Decathlon is open to the public starting today, until Oct 18th.
After the break, videos with the houses by Virginia Tech, Team Alberta, Team Germany and Team Puerto Rico.
Hasbro, the makers of the Monopoly game, have officially announced a competition that gives Monopoly-lovers the chance to design a building that will be included in the new interactive game Monopoly City Streets.
To enter this competition, you need to design a 3D building using Google SketchUp and upload it to the Google 3D Warehouse. The deadline to submit entries is Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 11:59pm, EST. Visit the Monopoly City Streets blog for the Official Rules, prizes, and more information.
For more information on how it works, click here.
© Juan Altieri / Uruguay
Yesterday, through our Facebook Fan Page we launched a new contest for you to participate. We are looking for the best render that you can send us. Only one per person/office is allowed. The best ones will be featured next week on ArchDaily.com.
Also, there will be a special winners category for the renders that get more “likes”. To vote, just go to our Facebook Fan Page, look for your favorite ones and “like” them. To submit yours, “upload your photo” through the Fan Page, and tell us which software you used to make it.
We have received many great ones, so don’t miss this great chance to show us your work! The deadline is next Monday at noon. Become ArchDaily’s fan right here and start participating right now!
The International Association for Humane Habitat (IAHH) is pleased to announce its Eighth International Student Design Competition on the theme of “Affordable Housing in Sustainable Humane Habitats”. The competition is open to students of architecture, housing, planning, urban design, landscape architecture and related disciplines of anthropology, sociology, engineering, economics, geography, social work etc. However, the design team must be led by a student of architecture.
The student participants are required to identify a site in a city of their own choice anywhere in the world for planning and designing affordable housing in sustainable humane habitat project.
The site for the project shall be about 5-10 ha which will be a brown field site located in an urban area which is at present neglected. The site may have dilapidated housing stock. The project shall aim at providing affordable housing to about 1000 families belonging to various income and social groups. A high priority shall be given to provide housing for the urban poor and low income families. The project shall aim at sustainable urban renewal of the area with a mixed land use strategy. For more information on submission, eligibility, awards and deadlines, visit the official website.
On the occasion of the exhibitions Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and Learning By Doing, the Guggenheim and Google SketchUp invited amateur and professional designers from around the world to submit a 3-D shelter for any location in the world using Google SketchUp and Google Earth. Over the course of the summer, nearly 600 contestants from 68 different countries submitted designs that met the competition requirements. Current Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture students then selected ten finalists for the People’s Prize award.
Public voting is now open! Vote now for your favorite shelter design among the ten finalists. Don’t forget to check back on October 21, when the People’s Prize winner will be announced along with a special Juried Prize chosen by a panel of experts.
Call it a sidewalk shed or bridge: pedestrian protection by any name is viewed as a Big Apple eyesore to many, including local building officials and the New York City chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Through a design competition, they are trying to improve the covers, which they say number 6,000 and add up to more than 1 million linear feet of unsightliness.
In August, the New York City Department of Buildings and AIA NY launched an international design competition called urbanSHED to create a designer shed that improves the pedestrian experience while maintaining or exceeding safety requirements.
Registration for the competition ends on September 18, and all entries are due on October 2. Three finalists will be announced during the week of October 7, and each will receive a $5,000 stipend to refine their entries. The winner, which can be an individual, group or firm, will be announced on December 17. The winner will receive a $10,000 prize, and the design will be built as part of the Alliance for Downtown New York’s Re-Construction Art Program.
Seen at Archrecord. For more information, go to the competition’s official website.
Building Information Modeling is quickly becoming the back bone of the Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Facility Management industries. As the transition progresses and projects are designed and constructed using BIM tools various methodologies and techniques have been developed.
The intent of this competition is not to review the appearance or special aspects of a particular design but instead the process and methodologies used to design, coordinate and construct the project both digital and physically.
More information on categories, submission, schedule and fees in the competition’s official website.
The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and HP are pleased to announce the 3rd Advanced Architecture Contest, on the theme of THE SELF-SUFFICIENT CITY: Envisioning the habitat of the future.
The aim of the competition is to promote online discussion and research through which to generate insights and visions, ideas and proposals that help us envisage what the city and the habitat of the 21st century will be like.
The competition is open to architects, planners, designers and artists who want to contribute to progress in making the world more habitable by developing a proposal capable of responding to emerging challenges in areas such as ecology, information technology, socialization and globalization, with a view to enhancing the connected self-sufficiency of our cities.
The competition prizes will consist of three scholarships for the IaaC Masters in Advanced Architecture for academic year 2010-11, cash prizes, and the latest generation of large-format HP printers. The selected projects will go on show in a major exhibition, due to open in Barcelona in May 2010, which will then travel to key cities around the world. The best projects will also be featured in a book to be published by Actar. The project is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Housing, the Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona City Council, and the publishing house Actar.
For more information on submission, calendar, rules and registration go to the official website.
SeARCH
In a previous post I told you about the competition held by the City of Rotterdam for a mixed used building to accommodate public services and a residential program, and we presented OMA’s entry.
After the break, find the entries by the five finalists: Claus en Kaan Architecten, Mecanoo Architecten, Meyer en van Schooten Architecten, OMA and SeARCH.
© OMA
The City of Rotterdam held a competition for a mixed-use extension for the City Hall, accommodating public and administrative facilities and a residential program. The competition requests that the mixed-use building becomes “the most sustainable in the Netherlands”.
Five designs were presented by the City, and they will be on public display at the NAI until Sept 13th to receive public feedback, which can also be made through the website. The teams will present to the jury on Septh 23th, and the winner will be announced sometime in October.
The 5 finalists are: Claus en Kaan Architecten, Mecanoo Architecten, Meyer en van Schooten Architecten, OMA and SeARCH.
OMA shared with us their finalist entry, in collaboration with ABT and Werner Sobek Green Technolgies. The project adheres to the highest energy efficiency requirements, and it also considers a sustainable approach in terms of speed of construction and future flexibility of the building through a repeated and flexible structural system.
Images from the other proposals will be featured on another article. Rem Koolhaas’ statement and more images after the break.
Exploration of housing typologies reveals vast the potential of overlaying urban, contextual, cultural, social, and life cycle flows toward determining new architectonic strategies for the future. The d3 Housing Tomorrow Competition invites architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore, document, analyze, transform, and deploy innovative approaches to residential urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.
The competition calls for transformative solutions that advance sustainable thought, building performance, and social interaction through study of intrinsic environmental geometries, social behaviors, urban implications, and programmatic flows. Special emphasis may be placed on housing concepts that investigate dialogues including engagement of internal/external socio-economic diversity, change/adaptability over time, public/private realm connectivity, and permanence/impermanence of materiality.
For more details on registration and submission, go to the official website.
Chicago Architecture Today announced two competitions currently initiated and concluding in April 2010. The first is student-based Mock Firms International Skyscraper Challenge which focuses on a studio brief for Mexico City. More details here.
The second is a professional competition called The 2010 Chicago Initiative. It has 2 components with one challenging designers to create affordable, sustainable transitional housing in select Western European countries where unsuccessful immigration assimilation has contributed to civic unrest. More details here.
The design team of L. Tuleikis, R. Antinis, K. Vaikšnoras, K. Lanauskas, and P. Vaitiekūnas shared their competition entry for the renovation of Lukishkiu Square in Vilnius, Lithuania. The competition highlighted “freedom” as the square was established for a memorial space. The team’s proposal consists of a gently carved out central Freedom Field, surrounded by sculptural compositions and an external flame along the perimeter of the site.
More about the entry after the break. read more »
The Steel Structures Education Foundation organized a competition designed for students to fuse their conceptual ideas with the reality of physical structure. With the program and scale left to the discretion of the designer, the proposal had to emphasize the “essential relationship” between the exploration of form and material, with regards to surfaces, members and connections. As an academic project, students also had to use their details to communicate with the steel fabrication industry as a way to expose ”the opportunities and restraints inherent in realizing conceptual design.” “It is important for students of architecture to grasp the fact that structural design lies not just in the realm of the engineer, but can be a means for architects of arriving at a meaningful realization of architectural ideas,” explained the SSEF. The winner, student Matt Schmid from the University of Waterloo, designed a bird sanctuary in Niagara Gorge in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
More about the winning entry after the break. read more »
Rendering By-Encore
Culver City, California based firm, SPF Architects recently presented their design concept for the Cantos National Music Center for Calgary. The project is “seen by many as one of the country’s most ambitious and important urban-design projects.” Located in the center of Calgary, the new music center will not only focus on performance areas but will become more of a cultural space as it will be “part museum and part education.”
More about the Music Center after the break. read more »
Support 
on the 
-- 
