"POWERING TRANSFORMATION" Competition.
Objective of the competition
Our profession has to be developed at many levels with the objective of giving answers to new global challenges which are bounded to habitability demands and our own resources capacity in order to give them. Architecture requires understanding and interpretation of new demands that will allow us to act locally on a global scale, from an interactive action that requires being the agent of change within the complexity paradigm.
Click the link below to download the brochure with information about the competition
"Switch on Powering Transformation" English
Competition rules
The competition will assess:
- Cross-cutting scales: Interventions in territory operating on different scales and capable of regenerating and/or transforming their environment beyond the site where placed. The jury will consider the influence of these decisions at a global scale: environmentally, socially and economically.
- Multidisciplinary: Integration of knowledge and skills resulting from additional disciplines for launching an increasingly complex reality. The description of different disciplines that have influenced the project will be considered.
- Interactivity: Working in open networks, using new technologies as an interaction opportunity to allow participative ways to make problem diagnosis, solutions’ generation, and implementation and development. Positive assessment will be given to open data collection.
- Horizontality: Complicity and implication of multiple diverse origin and operative cultures agents: Public Administration, Universities, Industry, professional collectives, city associations, etc. Actions needed at a public, private, productive and know-how level to make the project feasable will be analysed in detail.
- Innovation: In order to face new challenges in terms of strong dynamic transformations: management, financing, building, resources, waste, maintenance, time reduction, flexibility and adaptability, image, etc. Ideas linked to management and financing needed for project’s lifecycle will also be considered.
This competition intends to involve proposals developed in the university area - stimulating the transformation- to deal with the architectural project from five requirements previously described: it pursues an answer, or an attempt to answer the question:
What kind of proposals, arising from architecture projects, would allow to generate or to regenerate the city from the paradigm of sustainability?
The evaluation and measurement of the proposals’ sustainability, according to quantifiable criteria through social, environmental, and economic indicators (with existing tools or with different proposals) will be positively taken into account.
Subject
The subject is free. All sort of project proposals are accepted as long as they provide something to face global change challenges, and try to answer various or all requirements already mentioned on the introduction text. We are not looking for a specific answer, but rather options, proposals, ideas, all of them formulated in the same project language.
However, and in order to support those groups that need more explicit statement, there are two models presented, that can be developed during an academic year in an architecture school:
- Reuse and intervention in an existing building and its integration in a consolidated urban environment, considering the existing situation and the contribution that the intervention will mean as a model versus global change demands.
- The project about a new building and its integration in a consolidated urban environment or in a new area not consolidated, understanding that it will assume demands on quality of life but will also respect the limits –local and global limits with which we have to build our future.
In both cases, an urban & architectural strategy –underlying, implicit– must exist. One that transcends a true social & environmental action. The project has to try to produce a useful conceptual proposal beyond the problem that it solves.
Organization of the Competition.
Announcement, entry conditions and enrollment
The competition rules will be published on the Conference website (www.wsb14barcelona.org), on the GBCespaña website (www.gbce.es), on the ASA website (www.sostenibilidadyarquitectura.com) and on the websites of the national and international universities that participate on this Congress, ASA, GBCe and all universities that take part in this Conference, ASA, GBCe and all universities that wish to spread the invitation through their websites and will have information updated with all the competition news.
Participation will be through teams integrated by professors, coordinators and students. Each university will present one or various multidisciplinary teams. Participating students must be registered either in the 2013-2014 academic year, or in a post-grade course. At the same level, professors must be part of the University during the academic year 2013-2014.
The number of participating professors and students can be as large and multidisciplinary as wanted. However, the number of students must be greater than the number of professors. Workshops with two or more group of professors are allowed.
The pre-inscription will be formalized through an entry form on this website, where the following documentation will be included:
- Number of participants in the working team, qualification and technical school where the education activity is developed (1), team’s description and year of degree or post degree in which they are registered (2).
- Receipt in favour of GBCE, by the amount of the registration fee of 50€.
SUBJECT: University competition “Powering Transformation”. - Professors: qualification activity in the academic year 2013-2014.
- -Students: collated photocopy of the inscription on the university in the 2013-2014 academic year.
The definitive inscription will be formalised when the proposal is delivered.
The website where to upload the submission will be announced as soon as possible.
Any precision or adjustment to the competition will be notified through the website.
Calendar
The competition will be disseminated in the centres and international university networks.
Registration: is open from October 01, 2013 to July 20, 2014
Consultations: will be carried via e-mail through competition@wsb14barcelona.org until July 20, 2014
Submission of proposals: July 30th, 2014
Competition Verdict: September 5th, 2014
Presentation of the winning proposals: October 30, 2014, at the wSB14 Barcelona Conference.
Submission
- Three A-1 boards laid out vertically must be digitally submitted in one single file (maximum size: 10 Mb) Boards will include drawings, diagrams perspectives, photomontages, environment levels and specific criteria of the competition. They will also include memory. It is mandatory to include a graphic scale.
- Every panel must include, in the bottom band:
- Title of the competition: Powering Transformation.
- Panels numbered from 1 to 3.
- Name of the university.
- Title of the proposal.
- It is allowed to send a three minutes max. video in case the participants consider it helps to explain the proposal
Jury
An experts technical commission will be designated, approved by ASA and GBCe, which will evaluate the viability and sustainability of the offers received and will emit a technical report to be used as a guide by the jury.
The jury will be composed by recognized professionals engaged to agents that operate in the process of urban regeneration:
- Jury President: Felipe Pich-Aguilera, President of GBC Spanish.
- Vice-President: Miguel Ángel Diaz Camacho, ASA President.
- Members:
Peter Rich, Architect, Founding Partner of Light Earth Designs LLP,Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
Stephen Lau, architect, Projects Professor at the architecture school of Hong Kong University. Chair of the China-Hong Kong Green Building Council Hong Kong Chapter.
Antonio Elizalde, sociologist, member of Sustainable Programme of Chile. - Coordinates: Teresa Batlle, architect, member of ASA and GBCe
Award
Winning and selected Works will be presented du-ring the World SB14 Barcelona Conference, on 28th, 29th, 30th October.
3 prizes and 15 honorable men-tions will be awarded although some or even all might be declared null and void in case the jury agreed to.
- Prizes: three teams of teachers and students awar-ded will be invited to present their proposals during the Conference and also to participate in a round-table where to reflect on these issues.
First price: accommodation expenses for one person+invitation for gala diner+3 tickets+hp plotter designjet t520 36’+publication of the project.
Second price: accommodation expenses for one person+invitation for gala diner+2 tickets+hp plotter designjet t520 24’+publication of the project.
Third price: accommodation expenses for one person+invitation for gala diner+1 ticket+hp plotter designjet t120’+publication of the project .
- The Awards Ceremony will be held during the Conference.
- Honorable mentions: Up to 15 finalist proposals will be selected to be displayed in an exhibition whose opening will take place during the Conference. This exhibition will be made available to be shown in every participant university. Diplomas will be awarded to all the finalists.
The most representative projects of each continent will be published in the ASA and GBCe websites, on the periodical Habitat Futura, as well on other specia-lized journals.
NOTE: Competition organisers reserve the right to vary the prize contents in the case of obtaining more resources until the jury meeting. These modifications, although always increasing the quality of prizes, will be communicated to all registered teams and through the Conference web.
