The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and HP are pleased to announce the 4th Advanced Architecture Contest, on the theme of CITY-SENSE: Shaping our environment with real-time data.

The aim of the competition is to promote 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, engineers, 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, architecture, and urban planning, with the purpose of balancing the impact real-time data collection might have on sensor-driven cities.

The competition jury, which is composed of architects, professionals in a wide range of fields and directors of some of the world's foremost architecture schools, is looking for outstanding proposals at any scale, for any city in the world. Competition entries should be submitted via the Internet on Smart Cities, Eco neighborhoods, Self-sufficient buildings, Intelligent homes or any other proposal that analyzes the phenomena of sensor-driven cities and intelligent behavioural systems.

The proposal should include whatever texts, videos, drawings and other images may be needed to make it fully understandable.

The competition prizes will consist of: Three scholarships for the IaaC Masters in Advanced Architecture program for academic year 2012-13, cash prizes, and an HP latest-generation printer. The selected projects will go on show in a major exhibition, opening in Barcelona in May 2012, which will travel to key cities around the world. The best projects will also be featured in a book to be published by Actar-Birkhauser, like in the three previous editions: SELF-SUFFICIENT HOUSING, SELF-FAB HOUSE and SELF-SUFFICIENT CITY.

http://www.advancedarchitecturecontest.org

A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA

The more she hides, the more she exposes. And vice versa.

We reflected on the strange dialectics between hiding / exposing, as illustrated by Lady Gaga. Quite often she seems to want to hide away… her hair, her masks, her veils, betray a very high interest in hiding, in concealing…

Even her use of umbrellas, when outside it is sunny…!?

And the fact that quite often she hides her face behind her hand, when photographed (as if she is guilty of something, almost like Adam in the famous painting by Masaccio “Adam and Eve banished from Paradise”), does show the same thing… and the meaning of her video Paparazzi seems to be the same: an intense. almost neurotic questioning of the violation of privacy that contemporary life seems to be unable to avoid.

She probably does not want to end her life like Princess Diana or like the main character of “Das Parfum.”

But the price of fame is high, quite often! Sometimes tragically high!

So we are tempted to believe that she displays her legs,and sometimes even more intimate parts of her body in order to detract attention from “the other side,” her head, her eyes, her thinking and her feelings, and by extension, her mind and her soul… a strange duality / dichotomy.

But the incredible inventory of her facial expressions does testify about an unending attempt to hide away, as if she is ambivalent about her relationship with society. We are reminded of that strange short story by Albert Camus where the main character, a famous painter, leaves to society his last painting, a visual testament consisting of a single word, written with his own blood: Soli ary, (an ambivalent linguistic construct meaning either solitary or solidary depending on what letter - “t” or “d” - the viewer chooses to fill in the empty space with).

And perhaps for a pop artist it is even more difficult, this dilemma. Not to speak about a “star.”

Let’s explore this dilemma in A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA.

A HOUSE WITH VERVE / NERVE. A FRAGILE HOUSE. A WHIRLING HOUSE. A SINGING HOUSE. A DANCING HOUSE. A SUICIDAL HOUSE. A HIDING HOUSE. A REVEALING / EXPOSING HOUSE. A BAROQUE HOUSE. A TRAGIC(?) HOUSE. A BI-SEXUAL HOUSE. A LACED HOUSE. A MUSICAL HOUSE. A RED HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH A COIFURRE. A VICTORIAN HOUSE. A BLOODY HOUSE. A PLASTIC HOUSE. A HOUSE NAKED DOWN BELOW. A BURLESQUE HOUSE. A HOUSE DIFFICULT TO PIN DOWN. A HOUSE OF UNENDING FASHION STATEMENTS. A CHAMELEONIC HOUSE. A HOUSE CONTINUOUSLY REINVENTING ITSELF. A RHYTHMIC HOUSE. A VEILED HOUSE. AN EXUBERANT HOUSE. A CRYING HOUSE. A HOUSE ON CRUTCHES. A HOUSE WITH DARK GLASSES. A HOUSE OF LEATHER. A HOUSE WITH PROSTHETICS. A CHIC HOUSE. A LONELY HOUSE. A BLUE HOUSE. A HOUSE IN THE CROWD. A SHINING HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH A STRANGE HAT. A GREEN HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH TATTOOS. A HOODED HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH WILD HAIR. A MASKED HOUSE. A MODERN HOUSE LOOKING BACKWARDS. A HOUSE WITH HEAVY MAKEUP. A TENT HOUSE. A NOSTALGIC HOUSE. A SCREAMING HOUSE. A HOUSE NOT YET A HOUSE. A HOUSE MORE THAN A HOUSE. A HOUSE FOR A NOMAD. A TENTACULAR HOUSE. A SCRATCHED HOUSE. A SCRATCHING HOUSE. A HOUSE ON THE RUN. A HOUSE UNFINISHED. A WILD HOUSE. A SCENTED HOUSE. A HOUSE ON HIGH HEELS. A FRIGID HOUSE. A SENSUAL HOUSE. A HERMAPHRODITE HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH A PENIS. A HOUSE WITH A VAGINA. A HOUSE UNABLE TO SAY EVERYTHING IT WANTS TO SAY, THIS IS WHY DANCING AND SINGING AND PARADING UNENDINGLY, FASHIONABLY, GLAMOROUSLY, CRAZILY, CONTRADICTING / OPPOSING EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING. A PRIMITIVE HOUSE. A SOPHISTICATED HOUSE. THE HOUSE OF THE FUTURE…? THE HOUSE OF THE PAST…? THE BEGINNING OF A HOUSE…? THE END OF A HOUSE…? AN ELECTRONIC HOUSE…? AN EARTH HOUSE…? A HANDMADE HOUSE…? A PREFABRICATED HOUSE…? A GALACTIC HOUSE…? A BUBBLE HOUSE…? A PINK HOUSE…? A FREAK HOUSE…? A MONSTER HOUSE…?

A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA.

Please send us ANY work, ANY size and ANY format that responds to the theme. You can send your work to icarchgallery@yahoo.com. There is an entry fee of 30E (15E for students) payable by PayPal through the registration section of our website. The registration deadline is July 1st, 2010. The deadline for submitting your work is August 1st, 2010. We will display all the works received on our website: http://www.icarch.net. It is our intention to invite Lady Gaga to be part of the jury that will evaluate the projects received. And we hope that if one proposal matches “her essence and her spirit,” (as apparently the dress that Armani designed for her did), she will build it! We are almost sure of it! We suggest you choose a real location for your proposal, since we think that this potential client will be quite able to build anywhere in this world. Let’s get Lady Gaga interested in architecture! We think she might enjoy our provocation very much, since architecture is supposed to be “fr
ozen music.” So let’s bring together Dance and Music and Architecture through an adventurous, forward looking and exciting house for the ever changing Lady Gaga!

Thank you,

ICARCH Gallery

Call for Papers: Terrain Vague: The Interstitial as Site, Concept, Intervention

This collection of essays will focus on terrain vague�marginal, semi-abandoned space in or along the edge of the city�as abstract concept, specific locale, and subject of literary, architectural, or otherwise artistic intervention.

Ignasi de Solà-Morales defines terrain vague as land in a �potentially exploitable state but already possessing some definition to which we are external,� or �strange places� that �exist outside the city�s effective circuits and productive structures� (119, 120). Gil Doron similarly defines �landscapes of transgression� as derelict sites where �nature has started to reconstruct the built or (now) �ruined� environment. . . . space[s] that opened in the dichotomy of what we perceive as city and nature� (255).

We are particularly interested in responses to the idea, as expressed by Luc Lévesque, that ��terrain vague� offers a counterpoint to the way order and consumption hold sway over the city. Offering room for spontaneous, creative appropriation and informal uses that would otherwise have trouble finding a place in public spaces subjected increasingly to the demands of commerce, the �terrain vague� is the ideal place for a certain resistance to emerge, a place potentially open to alternative ways of experiencing the city.�

We invite submissions from a range of fields, in particular literature, architecture, ecocriticism, urban studies, cultural geography, the visual arts, and film studies. Suggested topics may include:

Site and situation
Forms of documentation
Contextual definitions/theorizations
Urban wilds
Transgression and recreation
Urban natural history
Environmental justice
Interventions

Please send abstracts of 300 to 500 words, accompanied by a brief bio, to site.situation@gmail.com. Inquiries are welcome.

The deadline for abstracts is 1 June 2010.
Completed essays will be due on 1 February 2011.

Manuela Mariani, The Boston Architectural College
Patrick Barron, University of Massachusetts, Boston
�That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is�all the new construction that would be built. This is the opposite of the �unromantic ruin� because buildings don�t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built.� Robert Smithson, �A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey�

References
Doron, Gil. �The Dead Zone and the Architecture of Transgression.� City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 4.2 (2000): 247-63.
Lévesque, Luc. �The �Terrain Vague� as Material�Some Observations.� http://www.amarrages.com/textes_terrain.html
Solà-Morales, Ignasi. �Terrain Vague.� Anyplace. Ed. Cynthia Davidson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. 118-23.
Smithson, Robert. �A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey.� Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996.

Modern in Denver Magazine and the founding members of The Denver Architectural League invite you to share your ideas on how we should house ourselves in the new century. This is an ideas competition seeking new definitions for modern language, modern living and modern lifestyle.

The competition is open to all designers and architects who are presently in school or who have been out of school for less than 10 years. There will be approximately $1000 - $1500 in cash awards and the winner will be published in Modern in Denver Magazine. The sites are 44' W x 68' L.

More information? Competition website is: https://sites.google.com/site/modernhousecompetition

ASLA has released its 2011 professional and student awards call for entries. Award recipients receive featured coverage in the October issue of Landscape Architecture magazine and in many other design and construction industry and general-interest media. Award recipients, their clients, and student advisors will be honored at the awards presentation ceremony during the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in San Diego, October 30 – November 2, 2011. The award winning projects will be featured in a video presentation at the ceremony and on the awards website following the event.

The prestige of the ASLA awards program relies on the high-caliber juries that are convened each year to review submissions.  Members of the professional awards jury are:

• David Yocca, FASLA, Jury Chair, Conservation Design Forum, Elmhurst, IL
• Robert Campbell, FAIA, The Boston Globe
• Mark Hough, ASLA, Duke University, Durham, NC
• Ilze Jones, FASLA, Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects, Ltd, Seattle
• Elizabeth Meyer, FASLA, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
• Laurie Olin, FASLA, OLIN, Philadelphia
• Pamela Palmer, ASLA, ARTECHO, Venice, CA
• Christine Ten Eyck, FASLA, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Phoenix
• Alex Washburn, AIA, Chief Urban Designer, New York City Department of City Planning
• William H. Tishler, FASLA, representing the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will join the jury for selection of The Landmark Award.

Members of the student awards jury convening in June 2011 includes:

• Mario Nievera, ASLA, Jury Chair, Mario Nievera Design, Palm Beach, FL, and New York City
• Thomas Balsley, FASLA, Thomas Balsley Associates, New York City
• Gary A. Brown, FASLA, University of Wisconsin—Madison
• James Burnett, FASLA, The Office of James Burnett, Houston
• Shane Coen, ASLA, Coen+Partners, Minneapolis
• Diane Dale, FASLA, William McDonough + Partners, Charlottesville, VA
• M. Elen Deming, ASLA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• John King, Hon. ASLA, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco
• Karen Phillips, FASLA, New York City Planning Commission

The ASLA awards program features six categories: General Design; Residential Design; Analysis and Planning; Research, co-sponsored by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture; Communications; and The Landmark Award, co-sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The student awards program also features the Student Community Service Award and Student Collaboration categories. 

Entry forms and payment must be received by:

• Friday, February 25, 2011, for Professional Awards
• Friday, May 6, 2011, for Student Awards

Submission binders must be received by:

• Friday, March 11, 2011, for Professional Awards
• Friday, May 20, 2011, for Student Awards

In need of inspiration? View the ASLA 2010 Professional and Student award-winning projects.

http://dirt.asla.org/2010/12/01/asla-2011-professional-and-student-awards-call-for-entries/

Together with the Society of Architecture and Spatial Design, the Department for Spatial and Sustainable Design from the Vienna University of Technology organizes the BLUE AWARD 2012.

The Kick Off Event of May 31, 2011 (11:00 am) at the Vienna University of Technology (Kuppelsaal) gives the winners of the first competition the opportunity to present their works - some of their designs were built.
Programm

Introduction
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Peter Skalicky
Rektor der Technischen Universität Wien

Blue Award 2012: ›Building for an Environment worth living in
Univ.Prof. Mag.arch. Françoise-Hélène Jourda
Architektin und Vorstand Abteilung für Raumgestaltung und nachhaltiges Entwerfen,Technische Universität Wien

They won! They built! Sustainability in Architecture, the new generation.
Blue Award Winners 2009 present their work:

Ismail Karaduman
Conservation vs. Heritage

Christian Probst, Elias Rubin, Erhard Steiner, Jürgen Wirnsberger, u.a.
SCHAP! School and Production

Sebastian Brandner, Christoph Grabner, Victoria Culen und Martin Summer
GERald
Kinder- und Jugendzentrum in der Mongole

AWR is pleased to invite students around the world to take part to the competition for graduate thesis on sustainable architecture and design innovation. The goal of this competition is to increase and promote sustainability culture and green architecture.

Participation is open to all graduates of architecture and engineering faculties coming from all over the world. The theses, made individually or in groups, must have been discussed in the period between January 1, 2009 and October 31, 2011.

The thesis submitted in the competition should cover the following areas: urban planning, architecture and tecnology

Prize € 1500

3 Honorable Mentions that will be awarded in the following categories: Urban Planning project, Architectural project, Technological - Structural project.

www.awrcompetitions.com
info@awrcompetitions.com

Water scarcity is both the history and the future of the American west. Re-thinking water use, particularly in the face of climate change, will be central to the region’s survival. The work exceeds the grasp of a single discipline, and touches all dimensions of the way people live and work. Sustaining the US West in the face of water scarcity and hydrologic variability brought on by climate change will require strategic architectures, infrastructures, and urbanisms that promote adaptation and resilience. Drylands Design seeks innovation in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, regional planning, and infrastructure design that addresses water supply, water quality, water access, water treatment, and the water/energy nexus. Drylands Design seeks integrative proposals from multidisciplinary design teams that anticipate science and policy perspectives as necessary dimensions of intelligent design response, and exploit beauty as an instrument of resilience and adaptation.

Competition Objectives + Priorities
The purpose of Drylands Design is to generate a portfolio of long term design strategies for the arid and semi-arid west’s water-scarce future. Proposals must recognize and address:

The Water-Energy Nexus
The relationship between water, energy use, and heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions is intertwined and self-limiting; uncoupling water’s capture, treatment, distribution, and use from energy-intensive delivery systems is critical to a new western drylands design.

Scarcity + Variability
The twin effects of climate change on the American west’s hydrologic cycle are expected to be scarcity (prolonged drought periods and diminished snowpack) and variability (increased intensity of flood events). Design for variability will replace engineering for stationarity.

Localized Resources
Rain water, storm water and single-use municipal supplies, currently treated as waste or flood hazard, form the largest “undeveloped” sector of western water. Converting local liabilities to assets will offset dependence on carbon-intensive imports.

Social Equity
Recognizing that no built environment achieves true vitality without social equity, Drylands Design seeks proposals that actively benefit low- and middle-income communities, urban and rural. More specifically, Drylands Design seeks proposals that promote an active and participatory civic engagement by citizen-users.

Thus, Drylands Design seeks responsive, variable, localized, and low-carbon alternatives to energy-intensive, 20th-century centralized water engineering solutions. Drylands Design seeks a portfolio of strategies for the west that actively remediate the environmental sterility, economic monocultures, and cultural lethargy induced by the West’s dependence on an obsolete engineering paradigm. Drylands Design seeks proposals that tactically promote a place-specific built environment of both ecological and cultural vitality.

Site – Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
Drylands Design seeks proposals for the arid and semi-arid regions of the US West, using John Wesley Powell’s historic, and imprecise, designation—the 100th meridian—as its starting line. The 100th meridian, as Powell pointed out in his 1878 Report on the Lands of Arid Region, is the approximate demarcation line corresponding to a radical shift in US hydrology. Simply put, it is, more or less, where humid East ends and the arid West begins. All proposals must be sited in the United States, west of the 100th meridian.

Design proposals may be for a real or speculative project, for one or more real sites, and must be as yet BE unbuilt by Spring 2012. All design proposals must be sited conceptually within three scales: the local, the regional, and the global.

Local Specificity
All design proposals are required to be sited within a specific location in the U.S. arid or semi-arid west. Locally, even hyper-locally, site-specific design is required.

Regional Relevance
All design proposals are required to identify the ‘typicality’ of particular site conditions, and address or speculate on scalability and replicability of design strategies to other comparable sites throughout the west.

Global Context
All design proposals are required to speculate on scalability and replicability to drylands in other parts of the world. If sprawl is arguably the West’s most enduring global export, could intelligent drylands design be its next?

Although this competition is not site specific, a site in Fresno, California may be used for the project if the team desires.

drylandscompetition.org

Tourism is a growing resource in the world, and Rome is one of the cities with the highest number of tourist visits per year.
It's rare be faced with a project in a city so rich in history and culture. Circo Massimo competition wants to create a new center in a polycentric city like Rome, a new meeting place, where young people can meet for sports, for a concert in the evening, for an exhibition, for a play.
All structures must be dismantled and eco-friendly, is not permitted the use of reinforced concrete.

Program:

Music: 1500 mq of structures for small musical performances
Sport: 3000 mq of outdoor sports equipment
Exhibits: 1000 mq of exhibition space
Facilities: 100 mq of services
Dining areas: 300 mq

Tourism is a growing resource in the world, and Rome is one of the cities with the highest number of tourist visits per year.
It's rare be faced with a project in a city so rich in history and culture. Circo Massimo competition wants to create a new center in a polycentric city like Rome, a new meeting place, where young people can meet for sports, for a concert in the evening, for an exhibition, for a play.
All structures must be dismantled and eco-friendly, is not permitted the use of reinforced concrete.

Program:

Music: 1500 mq of structures for small musical performances
Sport: 3000 mq of outdoor sports equipment
Exhibits: 1000 mq of exhibition space
Facilities: 100 mq of services
Dining areas: 300 mq

Archinsula, given the complexity of the relationship with the site, leaves a lot of freedom in the functional program.

www.archinsula.com

Tourism is without a doubt one of the largest economical activities in the world. The growth in the sector has not stopped even during the global crisis that started on the second half of 2008. Seafronts have always been the most desired and sought after real estate in the world. For many years, real estate developers saw great business opportunities in this sector and started developing seafronts to make bigger profits, sometimes forgetting, or even ignoring, the consequences that their action might have on the environment, society, the landscape, anEd history…
We propose a redesign of the seafront of Cala Millor on the coast of Mallorca, Spain. Architecture can be the base point for developing and improving these environments. These improved sustainable environments can create harmony between the tourists who want to visit them and the conservation and identity of the landscape.

The call is public and is open to all of the undergraduate architectural students as well as related careers: Engineering, Urbanism, Design, etc. that can prove by the means of an official document (registration receipt, student id., etc.) their condition as a student at the moment the inscription process is opened, as well as postgraduate students who have a degree that is no more than 3 years old (this way we consider it to be a continuing student). Participation can be individual or in groups, with a maximum of 6 contestants per group. Groups of different nationalities as well as different universities are permitted.

www.archmedium.com

The City of Helsinki is organizing an open international competition for ideas for Helsinki's South Harbour 2 May – 30 Sept 2011.

Time: 2 May - 30 September 2011
Sponsor / organizer: The City of Helsinki / The City Planning Department
Type: Open International Ideas Competition
Location: Finland, Helsinki
Language: English and Finnish
Fee: Free - no registration
Submission deadline: 30 September 2011

Eligibility

The competition is open to everyone. It is desirable for the entrants to form design groups with a varied composition of experts in the fields of land use and architecture, landscape architecture as well as traffic, community, construction and energy technology and harbour operations.

Members of the jury, secretary, their business partners or close relatives are excluded from the competition. All persons who have participated in the preparation work of the competition are also excluded. The competition organizer decides any exclusion matters.

Awards

A total of €165,000 will be distributed as prizes:

First prize €60,000
Second prize €45,000
Third prize €30,000

In addition, 2 redemptions worth €15,000 will be given.

Jury

Hannu Penttilä, M.Sc. Techn., Deputy Mayor
Tuomas Rajajärvi, Architect, Head of Department, City Planning Department
Olavi Veltheim, Architect SAFA, Town Planning Division Director, City Planning Department
Satu Tyynilä, Architect, Office Manager, City Planning Department
Ilpo Forssén, Architect SAFA, Project Manager, City Planning Department
Heikki Nissinen, M.Sc. Techn., Managing Director, Port of Helsinki
Mikael Nordqvist, M.Sc. Techn., Head of Department, Real Estate Department
Antti Ahlava, Architect SAFA, Doctor of Arts (appointed by the Finnish Association of Architects)
Vilhelm Helander, Architect SAFA, Professor (appointed by the Finnish Association of Architects)
Steven Holl, Architect, Professor
Jussi Murole, Architect SAFA

Design Challenge

The entrants’ task is to create a comprehensive ideas plan for the South Harbour that can be used as a basis for the future development of the area. The entrants must present public urban spaces for the area, chart the amount of supplementary construction, and placement possibilities as well as improve pedestrian traffic and cycling connections and spaces.

The competition area must be linked more tightly to the city centre structure. The entrants must examine how the space use of port operations can be made more efficient. The competition entries must consider, in particular, the area’s cityscape-related and cultural-historic values as well as appearance to the sea.

Website

During 2011, the municipality of Sipoo will host an open international planning competition for a sustainable community in Sibbesborg. The competition will be organised in co-operation with the Aalto University Department of Architecture, the Finnish Association of Architects, RYM Ltd and the OSKE Centre of Expertise, and is supported, through its sustainable community programme, by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.

The competition area is situated in the municipality of Sipoo, around Söderkulla urban district and the Sipoonlahti area. The aim of the competition is to put forward a plan for a community of up to 70,000 – 100,000 residents, with the main emphasis on the centre. In addition to this, the target is to outline the first steps in the extensive implementation process. 

The competition and its scope are based on the Sipoo 2025 Master Plan and the municipality’s expansion strategy which is a response to the overall development targets for the Helsinki region, an area which is one of the fastest growing urban regions within the European Union. The development of Sibbesborg, which lies at the heart of the region’s eastern development corridor, will be based on future rail connections. The development of the area as a compact and functioning community, building on its powerful landscape and cultural identity, offers a rich opportunity for the region as a whole. 

The topicality of the competition and its vision is underlined by the ongoing revision of the land use plan for the entire region. The Regional Council of Uusimaa is currently drawing up a new regional land use plan, which should be ratified during 2012 (The Regional Councils of Ita-Uusimaa and Uusimaa merged at the beginning of 2011).

The municipality of Sipoo hopes that one outcome of the competition will be to identify the best possible partners for the future planning and development of the area. Co-operation on overall and detailed planning of the area will be pursued with the award-winning competitors. The aim of the competition organisers is to establish how Söderkulla and the surroundings of Sipoonlahti should be developed in order to respond to local and international demands of sustainability both now and in the future. It is hoped that the experience gained through the competition may also be utilised in the planning of other communities and that it will aid in the development of new and advanced concepts for future urban areas.

www.sibbesborg.net

The goal of the International Competition for Osong BioValley Masterplan is to seek a creative and future oriented masterplan for Osong BioValley that develop into a leading global bio-industry. Osong BioValley must be planned to incorporate the following bio-related activities such as research, administration, industry, education, medical, culture, tour, service and others.

Theme of the Competition : Osong BioValley leading global bio-industry
Osong BioValley should be planned with providing all relevant bio-facilities such research, administration, industry, education, medical, culture, tour, service and others.
Osong BioValley should be planned to be a leading bio-industry while considering Osong Biotechnopolis, Osong Biotechnopolis II, Osong Station Area and Osong High-tech Medical Cluster and adjacent areas.
Sub-Theme
Participant of the Competition must include the following in preparing their plans and propose a creative and original plan and design.
Creating global bio-research town
- Osong BioValley should be planned to provide a global bio-research area and environment based on High-tech Medical Cluster.
Creating global bio-administration and industrial town
- Osong BioValley should be planned to have a global competitiveness in support of administration support system and attract bio-industries.
Creating global bio-education and medical town
- Osong BioValley should be planned to keep balance between education facilities that create job opportunities by education and academic-industrial cooperation and convergence and integration with medicine and medical devices.
Creating global bio-cultural and tourism town
- Osong BioValley should be planned to provide cultural tourism such as bio-museum, art gallery, theme park and supply medical tour such as health care institutions.
※ Participants could propose and add another sub-themes, and modify the above sub-themes in line with diverse and creative ideas.

http://www.osongbiovalley.kr

Venier Mobilificio Spa in the aim of establishing a long-lasting and stable relation with young designers and creative laboratories of the world of design, has created
VENIER DESIGN AWARDS – “THE ART OF ENJOYABLE LIVING”
The contest is open to designers, individuals or in group, not older than 40: Architects or Designers or Students, regular members of High Schools of Designs, and Faculty of Architecture.
We ask these creative people to discover the needs of two different research fields:
Modern Living Room
Classic Children Room
in order to realize one or more furniture proposals which have to stand out among the others for creativity, technical feasibility and mass productibility. A creative and production path which has to take into account modern technologies, which has to show how to optimize room, to simplify and improve everyone’s lives.
Everywhere, anywhere.


All submissions must reach Venier Mobilificio SpA by 6 p.m. (18.00 hours) on Friday, 16th September 2011.

1st Prize - 4.000 euro
2nd Prize - 3.000 euro
3rd Prize - 2.000 euro


COMPETITION OFFICE AND INFORMATION
Any further clarifcaton may be obtained from the competent office:
Silvia Abelli
e-mail: info@venierdesignawards.com
mobile 0039 393 2774991
download rules on the website: VenierDesignAwards.com

Call for Papers
Post-Parametric Environments
ACSA 100th Annual Meeting: Digital Aptitudes

Topic chair: Jennifer W. Leung, Yale
Annual Meeting Co-chairs: Mark Goulthorpe, MIT; Amy Murphy, USC
Deadline for Submission: 9/14/2011

One of Marshall McLuhan’s central arguments, identified in “The Invisible Environment: The Future of an Erosion” as “counter-environment” (Perspecta, 1967), is that transformative new technologies eventually bring the social and sensory consequences of superseded technologies into relief “through the rear-view mirror.” For McLuhan, the Greek oral tradition is the counter-environment of written language; Romantic landscape, the counter-environment of the railroad and factory; technologies of classification, the counter-environment of cybernetic pattern recognition. Counter-environments change the very nature of perception, and by extension the opportunities for intervention. McLuhan’s dialectic is neither oppositional, nor mutually exclusive, but involves positioning. His counter-environment does not destroy the environment, it frames and creates awareness, suggesting new models of engagement with present, past, and future conditions.

This session will posit that the parametric is already a historical periodization and, as McLuhan might argue, is the counter-environment to the current state of pedagogy and practice. Thus, the post-parametric is not the intensification of the same or similar codes and processes, as in the rationalization of curvature, optimization of form, or even the potential democratization of compute power afforded by cloud computing, self-modeling buildings, or personal super-computing. Instead, fundamental assumptions about parametric thinking, design, and computation need to be re-assessed according to the physical realities of our actual environments and sensory thresholds. Questions of perception, scalability, technology transfer, translation (not from drawings to building, but from models to models), and the construction of evaluative criteria for iterative design are critical to this re-alignment.

For example, supplementing the familiar celebration (or castigation) of geometries freed from industrial production or of capital freed from the rules of arithmetic, recent conversations have begun to take up the digital division of labor and the management of economic and ecological risk, furthering the disciplinary understanding of socio-economic relationships of distribution, communication, and production. On the other hand, the ubiquity of data processing and the binary code has homogenized, rather than adjudicated, post-war technological debates about the status of matter, energy, biological life, time and subjectivity. In other words, the naturalization of the parametric environment has surpassed the thermodynamic, molecular, relativist, and psychodynamic points of view which historically have shifted cultural notions of space and time. However, research in these areas, now on the other side of a disciplinary divide, has not ceased.

This session seeks to bring together various positions on the post-parametric environment, which will allow us to reflect generally on obsolescence, or which via reconsideration of obsolete diagnostic protocols, sensory thresholds, or representational schema in practice or allied fields clarifies the near and distant future.

• What forms of technology will bring parametric thinking and computing into relief?

• How have perceptual and representational regimes kept pace, or not, with computing and fabrication?

• What is the status of “environment” after the parametric?

Further guidelines will be updated periodically, including instructions for formatting and submitting papers for blind peer review. Please visit: https://www.acsa-arch.org/conferences/100.aspx . Acceptance or rejection of submissions is at the discretion of the topic chair and peer reviewers. Questions about the topic or about submissions may be emailed to: jennifer.leung@yale.edu

2011 International Algae Competition
A Global Challenge to Design Visionary Algae Food and Energy Systems
Algae Landscape Designs, Algae Production Systems, New Algae Foods

Algae Competition objectives are to create an open source collaboratory that expands and shares a vision for algae in our future with design ideas for algae production landscapes, sustainable and affordable algae production systems (APS) for food, feed, energy, nutrients, water remediation, carbon capture and fine medicines, and superb new algae foods.

The Competition is open to everyone, anywhere in the world: algae enthusiasts, architects, builders, designers, scientists, entrepreneurs, growers, food developers, cooks, students and teams. Registration is online at www.algaecompetition.com, the official website with all details and guidelines.

Registration opens January 11 through September 11, 2011. Submission deadline is October 11, 2011. Finalists will be announced February 12, 2012. The Competition has three tracks. Entries will be judged by distinguished panels of international jurors.

Track 1: Algae Landscape Design: How will algae production be integrated into future landscapes, farms and eco-communities and what will they look like and how will they work? Design integrated APS into future landscapes, farms, coastlines, cities, infrastructure, buildings and eco-communities.

Track 2: Algae Production Systems (APS): What are the best designs, engineering and systems for algae production to work effectively and economically on a community scale or distributed model? Develop working models and designs for APS and microfarms.

Track 3: Algae Food Development: What will be the next algae foods and recipes and the future uses of algae as a food and feed ingredient that will transform our health? Create menus and new food products incorporating algae as a featured ingredient.

As an open source competition, all entries will be showcased online. Over $10,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to winners. Finalists will receive international media recognition and will be included in books, publications and exhibitions to be held around the world in 2012.

Algae are nature's first life form and can create a future of abundance through affordable and locally produced food and energy. Thirty times more productive than conventional crops, algae can use cheap and abundant resources that will not run out. Algae will provide sustainable food and ecological living.

Over the past five years, a billion dollars have flowed into algae biofuel development. Even though commercial biofuel from algae may be years away, this new investment is creating innovative systems and technologies, making algae production more affordable. There is renewed interest in growing algae for many products. Algae Competition will feature and share new algae systems, encouraging anyone anywhere in the world to apply their creativity to design our future landscapes, growing systems and foods with this ancient life form, algae.

www.algaecompetition.com

INTERSECT: What Happens When Transportation Corridors and Cities Collide?
For the sixth consecutive year, this international competition challenges students in all disciplines to focus on a real-world urban design problem. In the spirit of the competition’s namesake, Edmund N. Bacon (head of Philadelphia's City Planning Commission from 1949-1970), the program focuses on encouraging multi-disciplinary, visionary ideas for our urban future.

Schedule:
Pre-Registration Due: Thursday, September 08, 2011 @ 11:59pm EST - http://mcaf.ee/0f3a4
Competition packets emailed on May 09, 2011 to all pre-registered individuals and teams
Final Entries Due: Friday, September 30, 2011 @ 11:59pm EST
Winners announced early 2012
Awards Ceremony: February 2012 (date TBD) @ the Philadelphia Center for Architecture
Pre-registration for Part 2 will be accepted starting April 2012

INTERSECT: What Happens When Transportation Corridors and Cities Collide?
When transportation corridors such as highways and rail lines meet dense urban areas, choices must be made about how to balance the needs of the transportation modes and the lively city it intersects. Across the world, cities have found innovative solutions for addressing issues relating to large-scale urban transportation infrastructure. Recently in the U.S. cities such as San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis have transformed highways into urban boulevards. Boston buried Interstate 93 in the famous “Big Dig,” but at a huge cost. Other cities have worked to bridge highways and rail corridors that separate downtowns from waterfronts. With international precedent for design solutions, the Center for Architecture challenges the next generation of urban thinkers to propose novel solutions to integrate Philadelphia’s major transportation corridors into its urban fabric.

Part 1: East (2011 Competition)
Philadelphia’s I-95 / CSX Corridor
Interstate 95 on the Eastern edge of Philadelphia is due to be demolished and rebuilt within the next several years, as it is nearing the end of its designed life. Further complicating the urban fabric in this area of the city is a lightly used but important freight rail line (owned and operated by CSX) which still weaves around the highway, its surrounding streets, and neighborhoods. How should the traffic, both passenger and freight, that currently flows along this major North/South corridor be addressed in a newly built Interstate solution? Competition boundaries: The I-95 transit corridor between the Ben Franklin Bridge to the North and the Walt Whitman Bridge to the South.

Part 2: West (2012 Competition)
Philadelphia’s I-76 / Amtrak Corridor
Amtrak’s main corridor through Philadelphia lies just outside Center City, on the Western bank of the Schuylkill River, passing through Philadelphia’s iconic 30th Street Station. Wrapping around the station and hugging the Western bank of the Schuylkill River, Interstate 76 provides the city with one of its most heavily used entries and exits for passenger vehicles. What opportunities are there for reimagining this complex hub of transit and its integration with the entire city? Competition Boundaries: The 1-76 transit corridor between West Girard Avenue to the North and Grays Ferry Avenue to the South.

Format:
INTERSECT will take place over two years, focusing on one of Philadelphia’s major intersections of transit and city in each year. Students are encouraged to submit entries in both years, and special consideration will be given to entries which acknowledge the issues to be solved in the other part of the competition. Students are not required to submit entries both years to be considered for a prize. Entries from multi-disciplinary teams representing a variety of departments and stakeholders, including perhaps designers, architects, planners, public policy makers, economists, MBAs, or others are strongly encouraged.

Individuals and teams may pre-register for Part 1 of the competition until 11:59pm EST on September 8, 2011 via this web form: http://mcaf.ee/0f3a4 . A link to the full competition material will be emailed to pre-registered teams on Friday, September 9, 2011. Electronically submitted entries will be due by Friday, September 30, 2011 at 11:59pm EST. First Prize is $5,000, and winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in spring 2012. The competition is open to students of all disciplines registered at a college or university during the duration of the competition. Unlike previous years, submissions will only be accepted electronically.

* * * * *

The Philadelphia Center for Architecture performs the charitable and educational work of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects and serves as the physical home for the Chapter in Center City Philadelphia. The Center offers walking tours, exhibitions, lectures, workshops, and children's programming on architecture, urban planning, and design. It is also home to the AIA Bookstore & Design Center and the Community Design Collaborative. In 2010 the Center for Architecture took over management of the Ed Bacon Student Design Competition and the annual Edmund N. Bacon Prize from the former Ed Bacon Foundation.

THE CHALLENGE
Television series has enjoyed critical and public acclaim since its launch, transforming the show into one of the most-watched television programs in the United States and around the world. It has received several awards and nominations, including a Peabody Award, two Golden Globes Awards and three Primetime Emmy Awards. It was the most-watched television series in the world in 2008, with an average of 82 million viewers in 66 countries. In the United States, the sixth season began with a two-hour episode on September 21 2009, and ended at the beginning of June 2010. The seventh season ended recently.
The challenge, therefore, is to create a Home-Office for House so that when the next series ends he will be able to move to Manhattan and enjoy a private practice set within an architectural design in keeping with his intelligence, good taste and sense of humor.
The project must be a new “pavilion”, located within the Fuller Building at the corner of Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

OBJECTIVES OF THE COMPETITION
The objectives of the “HOUSE’S LOFT” competition are as follows:
• To offer a global Architectural Ideas Competition that will lead to the selection of the 12 most original, creative and contemporary proposals for a new type of home-office for House.
• To express the spirit of a global urban culture through an analysis of the most representative aspects of the contemporary city selected.
• To attract the interest of specialist critics throughout the world regarding the new architectural proposals and ideas of those who will form the new generation of architects.

THE PROJECT
House’s home-consultancy is located in downtown Manhattan. Given that this is an emblematic and historic neighborhood, a way must be found to meet the innovative purpose at the root of the competition, while at the same time respecting the scale of the context, or causing it to stand out against the surrounding architectural volumes, as the architect Tadao Ando achieved with the project in the same city which we show below.

INFO: www.arquitectum.com

THE CHALLENGE

The initiative for an international architecture competition proposed by MAQUINARIAS, the exclusive distributor of Nissan products in Peru, is based on the need to enlarge its Service Center while ensuring the quality and optimum functionality of that facility, in order to offer the best service to its clients.
The architecture of this new building must represent contemporary tendencies, distinguishing itself through the singularity of its architectural design, while at the same time integrating with the remaining structures of the dealership.


AUTOMOTIVE SERVICE CENTER

The proposed Service Center must be prototypical of one of the most prestigious companies in the Peruvian automotive industry, as the representative of renowned brands like Nissan and Renault. This project must be a model of productivity, efficiency, function and design, replacing the traditional system of working with a high level and personalized service. To this end, the edifice must not merely comply with Peruvian safety regulations, but also subscribe to international standards of quality, safety and technology.

DESCRIPTION OF THE LOCATION

The lot is located on Javier Prado Av., one of the most important and heavily-used roads in the city, within the district of La Molina, in the city of Lima (the capital of Peru).


ARCHITECTURAL CONTRIBUTION

ARQUITECTUM considers contests to be an excellent means for architectural experimentation, discussion and speculation. To this avail, our client MAQUINARIAS (www.maquinarias.com) has expressed its willingness to experiment, given its interest in motivating architects to surprise them with their creativity and with a better idea than they initially expected, this is the main reason why this competition is being held. They are aware that this “surprise factor” is very important and that it may involve the undermining of some of the contest’s rules. MAQUINARIAS invites each architect to explore as far as he/she can, even if that should entail the overlooking or breaking of rules, making it clear, as well, that the risk also involves the possibility of being disqualified.


PARTICIPANT REQUIREMENTS:
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?
Architects from all over the world who have satisfactorily concluded their studies and count with a degree to certify them as such, as well as any team or office of professionals with at least one architect of said characteristics (in the instance that the person wishing to participate had a university degree –an MS in Architecture, for example— and worked in an office as a professional designer but was not a registered architect).

OBSERVATIONS:
- If the winning architect is not Peruvian, ARQUITECTUM will be in charge of associating him to a peruvian architect, so that he/she may develop the project in its integrity.
- Participation and registration in the Competition will immediately imply compliance and obedience to all the conditions set forth by these Rules.


PRIZES:
Prizes will be as follows:

1st PRIZE: US $ 15,000 (FIFTEEN THOUSAND AMERICAN DOLLARS) TAX FREE
2nd FINALIST: US $ 10,000 (TEN THOUSAND AMERICAN DOLLARS) TAX FREE
3rd FINALIST: US $ 5,000 (FIVE THOUSAND AMERICAN DOLLARS) TAX FREE
NINE HONORABLE MENTIONS

The winner of the competition will be offered the development of the project, in case he or she accepts, he or she will receive as professional fee the amount of US $ 60,000 (SIXTY THOUSAND AMERICAN DOLLARS). This only after MAQUINARIAS and the winner come to an arrangement on the development of the project.


FEES:

Special Registration: From June 01 to June 27, 2011: US $ 100
Early Registration: From June 28 to August 2, 2011: US $ 150
Late Registration: From August 03 to September 5, 2011: US $ 200


SCHEDULE

• START OF COMPETITION June 2nd, 2011
• ANSWERING OF QUERIES Answers will be updated at the F.A.Q for the entirety of the Competition
• SPECIAL REGISTRATION from June 2nd to June 27th, 2011
• EARLY REGISTRATION from June 28th to August 2nd, 2011
• LATE REGISTRATION from August 3rd to September 5th, 2011
• REGISTRATION DEADLINE September 5th, 2011
• JURY EVALUATION September, 2011
• ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WINNING PROPOSAL October 3rd, 2011





EVALUATION

The jury is made up by the following architects:

Arq. Miguel Rodrigo Pérez Aranibar
Arq. Juvenal Baracco
Arq. Samuel Cárdenas
Arq. Augusto De La Piedra
Arq. Enrique Gómez De La Torre

QUALIFICATION PROCESS
The criteria for evaluation of the preliminary plan are as follows:

 1st – Contribution in terms of the possibility of maintaining operations while at the same time constructing the new Services building in stages.
 2nd – Contribution in terms of function, use and efficiency of operations of the service center.
 3rd – Contribution in terms of the architectural spatiality of the project (spatial plan).


The Competition is open to any architect in the world.