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.