The G Project, hosted by G Adventures and The Planeterra Foundation, is giving four lucky innovators, inventors, visionaries and designers the opportunity to bring a humanitarian and forward-thinking project to fruition.  The G Project is inviting anyone to submit a design idea of any scale that will have a "positive impact on your planet".  The idea must be a proposal that falls into one of four categories: freedom, beauty, knowledge or community.  It is a crowd-sourcing exercise that seeks to engage ideas of any variety and asks the global community to contribute to deciding which projects deserve to be realized.  

Socrates Sculpture Park and The Architectural League of New York recently announced the selection of Toshihiro Oki architect for tree wood as the winner of this year’s “Folly” competition – an extraordinary opportunity for emerging architects and designers to experiment and build large-scale projects for outdoor exhibition. tree wood will be a rigid yet airy geometrical wooden structure placed within a grove of trees – a lush and dense area at Socrates Sculpture Park. Visitors will peer into the structure through the floor beams where a formal, ornate chandelier will be suspended. The installation creates a dialogue between built structures and systems with the irregular and organic. This winning project will open at Socrates Sculpture Park on Sunday, May 12th from 2-6pm. More information after the break.

The Chicago Architectural Club and Chicago Architecture Foundation, in partnership with the Chicago Department of Transportation, the Chicago Transit Authority, and the Chicago Bus Rapid Transit Steering Committee, recently launched the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition: NEXT STOP: Designing Chicago BRT Stations. Intended to catalyze iconic, sustainable, and functional design for representative corridors in Chicago’s planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, they are seeking entries that integrate innovative and compelling transportation design into Chicago’s urban fabric. Each design team must submit designs for three different prototype sites and demonstrate how BRT station design can be adapted to each context. Submissions are due by May 13. For more information, please visit here.

Organized by ORLI (Operation Resilient Long Island), a student-led grassroots committee of architecture, interior design, and construction management students from New York Institute of Technology, the 3C Comprehensive Coastal Communities Competition aims to catalyze the discussion of rezoning towns that are vulnerable to coastal storms. The post-Sandy rebuilding process has already begun, yet there are no strategies on how rebuilding communities can accommodate transforming coastal housing typologies. In effort to help local communities preserve the value of their neighborhoods, the challenge is to create a vision for a specific northeastern coastal community. Participants should design a resilient housing typology and integrate it into the community master plan. Submissions are due no later than July 25. To register, and for more information, please visit here.

Organized by Manifesto Architecture, in collaboration with Modern Atlanta (MA), the third annual MA Prize competition entries will be carefully selected to be displayed at this year's MA13 “Design in Human Week”. The event will be held from the June 1-9 in Atlanta, Georgia. This year, MA Prize highlights bold and innovative design projects that allow us a fresh perspective on the idea of 'SHARE', or ‘SHIFT’ the way we perceive ‘SHARE’. We commonly understand the idea of share as a fairly simple concept: when two different parts interact with each other to produce a new outcome. But, what does sharing mean to design; or what can design provide to sharing? Submissions are due no later than May 7. For more information, please visit here.

Striving for a diverse and international response, Storefront for Art and Architecture recently launched the Competition of Competitions. The intent of the competition is to provide and deliver new and relevant forms of engagement and content to the economic, politic and social systems that currently act as the voice of authority for the development of our cities. They are asking architects, artists, economists, philosophers, writers, and citizens at large to create interdisciplinary teams to formulate the questions of our time and define the agents that should pursue the task to ask and commission the visions for the future in the form of a competition brief. The deadline to register is May 22 and submissions are due by June 22. For more information, please visit here.

Young Architects Competitions (YAC) recently launched their latest challenge, 'Smart Harbor', which calls all architects, students, and designers 35 years and younger to create an urban transformation of dismissed shipyards. Deep and controversial economical transformations have been hitting Europe. On one side they show a highly destructive potential; on the other side they are the key to undiscovered scenarios once unimaginable. Beneath the remains of ancient systems often lays the opportunity to write new cultures. YAC aims to promote a field of research focusing on such contemporary living axioms: in synthesis it shall be smart. Modern technologies can provide users quick information and discretional points of view like never before. The deadline for submissions is June 24. To register, and for more information, please visit here.

The winners of CAPITheticAL, the international competition to design a hypothetical Australian capital city, were announced just last month in Canberra at the Gallery of Australian Design. A hundred years after the original call for design entries for Australia’s capital city, CAPITheticAL asked professional designers and students to imagine how an Australian national capital might look if created today. Western Australian landscape architecture firm Ecoscape won the $70,000 first prize for its submission, The Northern Capital. More images and information on the winning entries after the break.

Each year, the prestigious MIPIM Awards recognizes excellence and innovation in the international real estate sector.After a record number of submissions (over 175 projects from 46 countries!), 36 finalists were selected by the jury to compete in an onsite vote during MIPIM. The 23^rd MIPIM Awards took place on March 14^th where the final results were announced at a ceremony held in the main auditorium of the Palais des Festivals in Cannes. More images and information on the winning entries after the break.

Open to all architects, designers, urban planners, and landscape architects from any of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Arhitext design Foundation, editor of Arhitext magazine, recently launched an open call for projects to be presented at the Trans(ap)parencies Thematic Exhibition, at the 2013 East Centric Architecture in Bucharest, Romania. Inheriting a common history, the architecture of this region defines its identity today by making renewed use of local resources and by taking a critical stance with respect to international mainstream trends. For this reason they feel the need for a thematic exhibition. The deadline for submissions is April 11. For more information, please visit here.

Launching Tuesday, March 26, Council of the City of Gold Coast is calling participants to compete for the opportunity to design a landmark cultural ‘heart and soul’ on 11 hectares of the stunning Evandale site on Australia’s Gold Coast. The Council’s vision for the site includes a Living Arts Centre, for performing arts and cinema; a New Arts Museum for media, art and design; a stunning outdoor garden Artscape and a green bridge to adjacent Chevron Island. Concepts will need to be distinctive and innovative and will have to respond to a comprehensive design brief. The winning design will evolve into the city’s creative commons, a place loved by residents and a must-see visitor destination. For more information, please visit here.

The New York office of The Trust for Public Land recently issued an RFP for a feasibility study, framework plan, and conceptual design for the QueensWay--a potentially transformative 3.5-mile project which will enhance quality of life in central and southern Queens, New York by reclaiming the abandoned Rockaway Rail Line, a largely elevated rail corridor. The project, which includes a pedestrian and bicycle pathway connecting the communities of Rego Park, Forest Hills, Richmond Hill, and Ozone Park, will provide a new public green space, celebrating the cultural diversity of Queens with art, sculpture, and food from around the world.

There is a mandatory Pre-Submittal Meeting March 28, and the proposal submittal deadline is April 23. For more information, please visit here.

Adopted by the City of Green Bay in 2003, the Smart Growth Plan 2022 relied heavily on the participation of the citizens of Green Bay and provides city leaders with a guide to use while assessing policy and development proposals. The city of Green Bay Planning Commission is now accepting proposals for the Downtown Green Bay Master Plan Update. The selected firm must have a deep portfolio in results-proven city planning and design projects with an understanding of the urban redevelopment process. In demonstrating competence in developing and translating context-minded plans into actionable implementation strategies, the firm must be capable of creating an exciting and supportable vision for downtown that is grounded in local opportunities and realities.The deadline for submissions is March 25. To download the full RFP and for more information, please visit here.

Since its inception in September 2003, the journal Log has sought to present through writing the kinds of thinking and concepts that drive the making of architecture today. In Pursuit of Architecture, a special tenth anniversary issue of the magazine, will feature ten buildings that have contributed to architectural discourse between 2003 and 2013. They are inviting all architects age 59 and younger to submit one building project completed or started between 2003 and 2013 for publication in this celebratory issue. Temporary pavilions, installations, or competition entries are not included. The deadline for submissions is April 15. For more information, please visit here.

Videos

Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced the winners of the Mayors Challenge, a competition to inspire American cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life – and that ultimately can be shared with other cities to improve the well-being of the nation. Out of the 305 cities that competed in this inaugural competition, Providence, Rhode Island, was presented the Mayors Challenge Grand Prize for Innovation and a $5 million implementation award for its “cutting-edge early education initiative”. Mayors Challenge innovation prizes also were awarded to Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Santa Monica, all of which will receive $1 million to support implementation.

The City of Orlando's Mayor, Buddy Dyer, has challenged the community to develop a plan that would transform Orlando, within a generation, into one of the most environmentally-friendly, economically and socially vibrant communities in the nation. In an effort to do so, the city is introducing the Envision 2040 competition, which aims to illustrate what the city will look like in the future. Participants are being called to visualize what Orlando, the most sustainable city in the southeast, will look like in 2040. If all the goals and objectives of the plan were implemented today, what would our city look like in the future? The deadline for registration is March 18 and the deadline for submissions is April 15. For more information, please visit here.

Organized by Building Green Magazine, the MEA2013 Awards competition aims at highlighting projects that follow the principles of sustainability in architecture during the last five years in the Mediterranean zone, mainly through environmentally responsive passive design solutions. The goal is to enhance the exchange of ideas on environmentally conscious design, and enrich the ecological sustainability approach. MEA2013 covers all buildings that have been completed in the Mediterranean zone in the following categories: Civic, Urban, Residential, Healthcare, Cultural, Leisure, and Commercial Design Projects. The deadline for submissions is April 5. To apply, and for more information, please visit here.