Urban SOS Student Competition

Hear this: Sudents around the world are invited to submit innovative solutions to the pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges confronting cities worldwide. The Urban SOS: Distressed Cities, Creative Responses competition, sponsored by EDAW AECOM, is offering $20,000 in prize money to encourage creative interventions that have potential for lasting improvement.

Areas with slum conditions (like in Manila) are one possible subject area for the Urban SOS competition.

“More than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas,” said Jason Prior, President of EDAW AECOM. “Well-executed cities are vibrant cultural, social and economic centers and offer hope for addressing climate change and resource scarcity. But in many urban places serious challenges affect quality of life, limit opportunities and perpetuate inequalities. We want to encourage students’ fresh ideas and creative solutions to a range of real issues.”

It is open to individual students or teams of up to four undergraduate and graduate students at all levels from all countries, in the design and planning fields – including landscape architecture, urban design, planning, architecture, landscape urbanism, economics, geography, engineering, environmental studies and related fields. In their submissions, students should address an actual site from any city in the world and develop an intervention that offers lasting improvement to problems ranging from economic collapse, environmental degradation, social disintegration, civil unrest, climate change or natural disaster.

The socioeconomic health of cities can also be addressed in the students’ proposals.

To participate, students must register and provide statements of intent by May 15, 2009; final board submissions are due July 31, 2009. Semi-finalists will be announced September 1, 2009. The semi-finalist teams will each be assigned a professional EDAW AECOM mentor who will work with the team to further articulate its proposed interventions. The top four finalists will travel to Barcelona, Spain to present their treatments to a jury panel at the World Architecture Festival in November 2009.

The Urban SOS competition is an evolution of the EDAW Intern Program. Since 1980, EDAW has guided students from around the world in holistic, cross-disciplinary approach to real-world projects involving issues of regional or international significance.

For more information, log on to www.edaw.com.

10 to a 100

You may have heard of it but we’re still posting it here. Project 10 to the100th. You’re design idea may change the world.

Submission ends on October 20.

Darna? No, it’s Volcom!

Charl Sapina of GeiserMaclang informed us of a graphic design contest. And the artworks must all have a stone–the Volcom stone. Read on to find out.

If you’re an artist and a legit Filipino citizen, be the one to shout out “Why are you hurting your neighborhood? What’s wrong with you?” 

The best among original submitted graphic shirt designs with this theme will be picked out by Volcom and made into a limited edition shirt. The chosen designer will be featured by Volcom and enjoy the following awesome perks:

 -A cash prize of Php 25,000.00

-A Php 10,000 shopping spree of Volcom stuff from Aloha Boardsports.

-Plus, media mileage and bragging rights for holding the title of being a Volcom Featured Artist                                                                    

You can use any art or graphics medium. Just be sure to submit it in the following format:

-16 ½” width x 23 ½” height JPEG format with 300 dpi

Upload your piece to http://www.volcomcallforart.com using the registration form found in the site. You will receive a confirmation email acknowledging receipt of your entry.

All artworks must be in before midnight of October 30. Results will be out by the 2nd week of November so start working on your all-original piece now, ’cause you just might be the next Volcom Featured Artist.

 For questions and more information, you may email info@volcomcallforart.com. We would be appreciate it very much if you include in your email you found out about the contest from us.

The Green Hunter

It seems that 2008 is the year of design competitions. Here and there, we got lots of call for entries . You have, of course, the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence National Competition which is perhaps the biggest annual design competition. There’s also this design competition sponsored by Wilcon, and another landscape architectural competition sponsored by the MMDA. But of these competitions, we never thought that the “underdog” would be one of the most interesting—the Hunter Douglas design competition.

Hunter Douglas, a world class supplier famous for their sophisticated line of building solution materials such as screens and shades turned into green architecture as the focus of their recent competition. For the architect category of on-going projects, it’s our good friend, architect Francis L. Santaromana together with architect Rachel Ebalan who won. And you will never guess what space their entry was—a gymnasium, nonetheless.

Francis and Rachel’s entry, the De La Salle Santiago Zobel Sports Pavilion may be an unconventional entry to submit to a design competition. But once, you see their concept boards and plan, you’d immediately understand why they won. Every little aspect of design—concept, layout, materials and techniques—all played around the principles of Green architecture. No detail is left out untied to environmental-friendly design.

Apart from the meticulous use of environment-friendly Hunter Douglas products throughout the gymnasium, we are particularly amazed at their use of Brisse Soleil system for the exteriors. Traditional technique implemented through modern products is not exactly the kind of design you would always see become effective. But for this project, the Brisse Soleil exteriors not only provided its cooling function for the structure, it also bestowed an exceptional identity to the building.