The city of Helsinki has announced plans for a design and build competition for a new commercial and residential district in Pasila, near the city centre. The competition, which calls for 8-10 buildings of 15 stories or more, will be part of the city's drive to make Pasila the "second centre of Helsinki," with a total of 150,000-200,000 square metres of residential and office space planned for the district. Read on after the break to find out more about the competition.
After the record breaking success of Fairy Tales 2014, with over 300 entries from 50 different countries, Blank Space is excited to announce that the second edition of the competition is now open for registration. The Fairy Tales competition invites architects, designers, writers, artists, engineers, illustrators, students and creatives to submit their own unique architectural fairy tales. The scale, location, and program of the submission is up to each entrant. A successful entry crafts a text narrative, along with 5 images, in the most spectacular way possible.
In partnership with La Sapienza University, Progetto Forti and Rome municipality, Young Architects Competitions (YAC) is launching a competition to redesign one of the treasures of Rome: Forte Portuense.
As part of the Liget Budapest Competition, SCStudio has shared their entry for the House of Hungarian Music. A transformation of an existing city park, the project is conceived as a sequence of cultural programs - an “urban archipelago” - connected by a “naturalistic promenade” of pathways and landscape within a preserved forested area.
The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) has opened their 2015 call for applications. The biennial award celebrates urban places that are distinguished by quality design and their social and economic contributions to our nation’s cities. Winners offer creative placemaking solutions that transcend the boundaries between architecture, urban design and planning and showcase innovative thinking about American cities. One Gold Medal of $50,000 and four Silver Medals of $10,000 will be awarded. Projects must be a real place, not just a plan or a program, and be located in the 48 contiguous United States. Award winners may use prize money in any way that benefits the project. The deadline for entries is December 9, 2014. Learn how to apply here.
The Henning Larsen Foundation is launching an international competition on architecture and film with the intent to “revitalize the use of architecture on film and foster new inspiration to architects and film professionals.” The theme of the competition is the experience of architectural space over time. The task is to create a film sequence of 1-5 minutes which animates architecture by embracing time as the primary dimension. Up to €18,000 in prizes will be awarded to entrants who inspire a new approach to architecture and the film media. Submissions are due by March 15, 2015. A winner will be announced on April 20, Henning Larsen’s birthday. More information can be found here.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Nicholas Hare Architects, Orms, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects and Tim Ronalds Architects have been shortlisted in a competition to expand and develop the Marlborough College science building in Wiltshire, England. “The current Science Block has a fascinating heritage but needs a new life to accommodate new teaching methods,” explained Malcolm Reading, the competition’s organizer. “The competition is all about finding a balance between the architectural grain of the existing eclectic campus and a confident and exciting piece of contemporary architecture.” The teams will now develop proposals. A winner will be announced in December.
matterbetter has launched an international open-ideas competition for a Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) Memorial and Park in Amsterdam. MH17 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down near the Ukraine–Russia border on July 17, 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is planning to construct a second location in New York City. As reported on the Art Newspaper, the expansion project, known as the “Collection Center,” aims to “consolidate its staff and art storage into one efficient, multi-use building with a dynamic public programming component.” The news broke with the release of a curatorial job position, seeking personnel to assist in the center’s planning and a possible architecture competition that will ensure the “Guggenheim’s reputation for being a visionary architectural patron” is preserved. Meanwhile, the Guggenheim is expected to narrow its selection to six for its new Helsinki location in November.
Seven humanitarian initiatives have been nominated for "Socially-Responsible Design's Highest Award,” the 2014 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Presented by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, the $100,000 prize is awarded each year to scientists, students, designers, architects, activists, entrepreneurs, artists and planners from all over the world using innovative solutions to solve some of humanity’s most pressing problems.
Final Call! All entries for the 2015 Bauwelt Award must be submitted by September 30th. The award (consisting of 5 awards at 5000 Euros each) is applicable for all architects and landscape architects’ "First Works" projects - any work realized by independent responsibility and completed after September 30, 2011. In addition to the prize, award-winners will be published in an exhibition at the BAU 2015 on the Munich fairgrounds starting January. An Advancement Award grant is also available, prized at 5,000 Euros, to fund an interdisciplinary research, exhibition or installation project that has yet to be completed. Visit the official website to learn more about the competition and how to apply.
Unbuilt Visions promotes critical debate about architecture and design by acknowledging excellence in unbuilt projects. This annual competition provides an opportunity to engage with architecture, urbanism, interiors, and designed objects at the conceptual stage by recognizing work that offers a critical contribution to worldwide architectural discourse.
Exploration of contextual, cultural, and life cycle flows offers a critical lens for visualizing new housing strategies for living in 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.
How will sea level rise affect Metro Vancouver and what can we do about it? Take a look at the #RISEIDEAS competition from SFU Public Square – an open ideas competition with a Grand Prize of $35,000 to find innovative ways to address sea level rise. Form a team of one to four people, submit your idea online, and you could take home the cash, rub shoulders with experts at the October 19 public exhibition day, and win free event tickets. The deadline for competition submissions is October 6, 2014. Check out the website for all the details.
Francisco Gonzalez-Pulido, chief designer and president of JAHN, has shared with us his net-zero design proposal for the new Mexico City International Airport competition. Similar to the Norman Foster and Fernando Romero's winning design, JAHN's proposal is a symbiotic blend of sensitive cultural meaning and powerful energy efficiency. As per competition requirements to pair an international firm with a Mexican firm, the project was the result of a collaboration with local architects Francisco Lopez-Guerra of LOGUER and Alonso de Garay of ADG.
Cloud Citizen, a proposal for a new high-rise typology by Urban Future Organization and CR-Design, in collaboration with a team of experts at Chalmers Technical University, has been jointly awarded the highest prize in the Shenzhen Bay Super City Masterplan Competition. Their futuristic design features a singular mega building complex that aims to create a hyper dense urban center that gives back to the environment. Read on after the break to learn more about the proposal.
FuturArc, a bimonthly journal that promotes the enhancement of sustainable architecture in Asia, have launched their annual contest to generate ideas for innovative and sustainable design. The contest is split into two, with the FuturArc Prize and the FuturArc Green Leadership Award rewarding sustainable design in both unbuilt and built projects. Read on after the break to find out more about both competitions.
Combo Competitions, an organisation founded by Swedish, London based architect Per Linde, organises international idea competitions for architects, designers and students. With a gentle emphasis on the ideas presented in proposals, rather than aesthetics alone, their main driver is to promote design concepts "where everything comes together to form a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts."