Architectural competitions

Competitions are a big part of architecture. Loads of interesting commissions are obtained by means of competitions, and quite some offices solely obtain their jobs from competitions. And that's not only the big, invited competitions that the stars of architecture participate in, also smaller design competitions play a huge role for offices.
But also for young, emerging architects, competitions can form a breakthrough moment to obtain commissions one would otherwise never get. Just think of the offices that started out after winning Europan, or something similar.

And the internet is, of course, a brilliant way to actually find different competitions. It's easy to browse through online databases with competitions, select local ones that might be interesting, choose certain types of commissions and more. The downfall is that there are just so many websites filled with competitions out there, that it's hard to keep the overview. And that's exactly what I'm trying to do with this post: make some sort of overview of the (many) websites that regularly display overviews of architecture and design competitions. It will definitely not be complete, so if you think a website is missing, let me know...

Akademisk Arkitektforening
The Danish institute of architecture keeps an overview (and helps with the organization) of Danish competitions - and adds some international competitions to the site, too.

Archined
Archined is a Dutch architecture portal, on which they keep a small selection of competitions, calls for papers and so on. It's devided in "national" (Dutch) and "international" (worldwide) competitions.

Archiseek
This international portal has a free mailinglist service, to keep updates on competitions. Other than that, they have some information/discussion about competitions on their forum.

Architectenweb
This Dutch website gives a small overview of Dutch and international competitions. However, the site is only in Dutch.

The Architect's Newspaper
It's not the website with the clearest overview, or the best way of searching through the listings, but they have a lot of competitions and awards on their website.

The Architecture Room
This all-round architecture website has a nice variety of competitions. They also have some nice non-architectural design competitions on here, every once in a while.

Architekturwettbewerb
This site has the full overview of architectural competitions and awards in Austria. It shows results, new competitions, it has different ways to search the database: all in all, it's very complete. But only in German, though.

Baunetz
An overview of German and international competitions, in German. A nice selection, but I'm pretty sure this is a collaboration with Bauwelt, so they have the same competitions featured.

Bauwelt
An overview of German and international competitions, in German. A nice selection, but I'm pretty sure this is a collaboration with Baunetz, so they have the same competitions featured.

Bustler
The American website Bustler has loads of information on competitions, events, awards and all that.

Competitionline
This German website is all about competitions. Whether it's competition announces, competition results, you can find it here. It's mainly regionally confined to the German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), but they also have some more international competions on the site. The website is in German.

Competitions
This website is solely dedicated to architecture and design competitions. And they have a nifty newsletter-service, too!

Concursos Publicos
An overview of Spanish architectural competitions. Or at least, I assume it is. I hardly understand Spanish, so I'm not completely sure.

Death by Architecture
A decent overview of a wide assortment of competitions, mainly US-based. However, it seems that the website had more content some time ago - or would it be that there are less US-competitions because of the financial crisis?

Designboom
Well, it isn't architecture, but this site features some design competitions, every once in a while. I figured that that's close enough to earn a position on this list...

Deutsche Bauzeitung
If you are able to read German, you can pretty much find all European competitions and tenders through this site.

Europaconcorsi
This Italian website remains somewhat of an enigma to me - and not just because of the language. It's clear that they have tons of information on competitions, but I've got the feeling that you have to be a (paying) member to be able to see the most crucial data.

National Association of Norwegian Architects
If you are looking for a competition in Norway, this is the site to turn to. However, don't bother if you cannot understand Norwegian - It's all in Norwegian, as far as I can tell.

Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland
An overview of some competitions in Ireland. However, I get the feeling that this website isn't updated very regularly.

Royal Institute of British Architects
If there's an architecture competition in the U.K., It's bound to come from this website. The RIBA organizes and publicizes the British architecture competitions.

SIA
The Swiss association of architects has a database with all kinds of architecture and building commissions. The website is both in German and French.

Steunpunt Ontwerpwedstrijden
This Dutch organisation helps with organizing competitions, makes sure that competitions follow the right procedures for competitions and such - albeit only in the Netherlands. Correspondingly, it has a (small) database of live competitions in the Netherlands. The Website is in Dutch.

Swedish Association of Architects
An overview of live architecture competitions in Sweden, mixed with some international competitions. Unfortunately, even though there is a ton of information in English on the site, the contents of the competitions are mostly only in Swedish.

TED
TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) gives an overview of all European Tenders - which means all kinds of public commissions that fit within the rules of the European Tenders. Part of these are architectural works, but most are otherwise. A lot of great jobs can come from a site like this, but it takes time to search it, and (depending on the country) it can be a hassle - including stringent demands on behalf of the competitors - to enter the competitions.

Union of International Architects
Within the site of the Union of International Architects, there's a small section dedicated to international architecture competitions. Most of them can be found elsewhere, too.

Sculpting yet another museum

The Guggenheim Museum is a brand. It's a world-wide concept of museums. It doesn't even matter that much what is on display, it's about the brand of the museum. And a big part of the the branding exercise has to do with spectacular architecture. For instance, the Guggenheim in Bilbao is world-renowned, but that's mostly because of the spectacular building by Frank Gehry. Probably, more people know the building than the items on display. And the concept is expanding ever more, all over the globe. The latest addition is a plan for a new Guggenheim Museum in Vilnius (Lithuania).

Well, maybe calling it "a plan for a new museum is stretching the truth a bit. There has been a feasibility study for the establishment of a new museum in Vilnius, in a joint project by the Guggenheim Foundation and the Hermitage Museum. And as those things go: the organisation went for big shot, famous architects to come up with an awe-inspiring, iconic building. So they commissioned Libeskind, Fuksas and Hadid for this museum building. And the three of them came up with signature, impressive icons. Libeskind strayed from his regular "stacking boxes in a faux symbolic language", Fuksas went for a rather becoming "contemporary plastic-looking blobby animal", and Hadid... well, she just did the same as always. Organic, dynamic structures, very elegant with odd-shaped windows. I can understand why she won this competition. And I'm sure that it'll be an amazing building, if built.
But the thing is - and I never ever thought that I would say this - it's so damn safe! It's not so much a signature, it's just more of the same. Sure, it's spectacular and beautiful, but it's not that refreshing anymore. I've seen Hadid do this multiple times before. Not to mention the groups of followers and copiers who are doing lesser versions of this kind of stuff.

So, just for novelty sake, I'd rather have seen the proposal of Fuksas being built. It's slightly over the top, it's less elegant (and possibly less iconic), but it would've been a new direction. I'm not sure whether it would've been better, but any kind of experiment has the potential of failure in it. And I just applaud experiment - which the proposal by Hadid clearly isn't...





All the images are from The Architects' Journal

The biggest parasite in the world

Looking at skyscrapers and dense urban areas makes one wonder: how could these become more sustainable in the future? It isn't that much about all the new skyscrapers that are being built - since "green" has become to mean "big bucks" all new skyscrapers are green in one way or another - but the existing urban structures. For the evolo skyscraper competition, Daewon Park has taken exactly this as his starting point, with another idealistic concept in the back of his mind: "a way to reunite the isolated city blocks and insert a multi-layer network of public space, green space and nodes for the city."

He designed a series of prefabricated, stackable modules, that can attach to existing structures. Thus, the new structure adds extra qualities: it could be either green space for gardening, wind turbines for renewable energy, or any kind of other green or sociable programme.

Sure, it's not the most realistic proposal in the world, and it is quite unlikely to ever be built, but that's not the point in an open idea competition. The point is that the concept is a refreshing look at the problems and difficulties of inner-city life in very dense areas. Just imagine that you could clip a parasite to your building to gain such an extra quality of life. Wouldn't that be great?

I found this project on treehugger.com.

bush library

It's a tradition that every departing US president gets to erect his own library for his legacy. Whatever that might be. It's pretty much final that the New York-based architect Robert Stern gets the job, as the Austin American Statesman writes in the article "good enough for Mickey Mouse, good enough for Bush".

I cannot really be bothered to care about this. First of all, I'm pretty sure that the library building will be un-original, un-spectacular and un-interesting (because of both the architect and the president involved), but also because I think that Bush is a disaster dressed up as president, and I suppose his legacy is right up that alley.

Basically, I couldn't be bothered about the entire thing. Until I found that a magazine called "The Chronicle of Higher Education" came with counter-proposals for the libary, in what they called the back-of-the-envelope-design contest: they asked their readers to submit ideas (literally as proposals sketched on the back of an envelope). And some of them were really funny: some play on the irony of the connection "Bush" and "library", some refer to his bad reputation as a cowboy-cum-president, and some just sarcastically insinuate that the guy is a moron. I especially enjoy the "library and fun ranch" proposal. It would definitely fit the Bush-administration better than a classical library.

Stockholm Library (2)

One of the first posts I did on this blog was about the fact that the competition for the extension of the library in Stockholm (by Erik Gunnar Asplund) got about 1170 entries.

And now, the result for the second round is in. In this second round, six design teams got the chance to develop their proposals further. Of these six, the project of Heike Hanada, called "Delphinium" was ultimately selected by the jury. In the results of the first round, her design didn't quite catch my eye, since it wasn't one of the most spectacular of the six. But the second stage really brought out the qualities of the plan - unlike some of the others (for instance, I think that the initial qualities of the "Blanket" plan are completely ruined in the second stage).
The plan is quite respectful towards the Asplund Libary, creating some distance between the old building and the annex, and functioning like a backdrop of some kind. But the new building is more than just a stage for the Asplund building to shine upon: it has a nice secret garden (behind the lower part of the building), which is visible from a spatial route inside the complex. And it has similar qualities as the Asplund building has: simple and clean geometric shapes, a speaking subtle ornamentation and a humane expression. It may not be the most spectacular building that could have been selected, but it's a good, well thought out design. It's pretty Swedish, in a way: it's more safe than experimental, it's more kind than in-your-face, it's very "logom" which is a typical swedish concept and can be translated by "just right" or "just enough".

For more information about the competition, check out the official website.

Competition insanity - Stockholm Library

For the first stage of the open competition for an extension to the Stockholm public libary, 1.170 proposals were submitted and approved. Let's just count for a second: just imagine that the jury invested 5 minutes to discuss each plan. They would've needed 5.850 minutes in total. That's 97.5 hours. Assume that the jury would work an average of eight hours a day - it would take them exactly twelve days and one and a half hour to only review all the proposals.
This sounds pretty impossible, right? I try to imagine how they did that - but I am without a clue. Or is it safe to assume that somewhere within the vast masses of proposals lies one that is better than any of the six proposals for the second stage of the competition?

That being said: the six selected proposals are at the moment being worked on, since the second stage proposals should be submitted by september 14th. Personally, I am interested what comes out of the development of two of the proposals: "book hill" and "blanket". For "book hill" it's mainly the meandering townscape (between building and landscape) that fascinates me. However, I am quite curious if the roof will be activated in some form. For "blanket", the man-made ending in itself is a nice idea - but the terraced interior of the libary (which is sunken into the ground) is the most spectacular selling point. I cannot quite decide which of these two plans to favor: isn't there a way to combine them?

More information on this competition (including the six selected proposals, the jury's report and all the submitted plans) can be found on the site of the Swedish Association of Architects