Spring Competitions Roundup

. Whether you have spring fever or seasonal allergies, or both, try to pull yourself together for a moment and check out this list of noteworthy design competitions now accepting entries. (For a more complete, and frequently updated, roster of design contests, be sure to check out our online Events section.) . Suburbia Transformed, One […]

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Whether you have spring fever or seasonal allergies, or both, try to pull yourself together for a moment and check out this list of noteworthy design competitions now accepting entries. (For a more complete, and frequently updated, roster of design contests, be sure to check out our online Events section.)
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Suburbia Transformed, One Garden at a Time
This juried competition will assemble contemporary projects that explore green technologies within the context of the aesthetics of human landscape experience on small residential sites. The emphasis is on how emerging sustainable strategies and tactics are used to create human landscape experiences that are beautiful, inspiring, perhaps profound, and which might serve as examples for transforming the suburban residential fabric, one garden at a time.
Submission deadline: April 16

Electrolux Design Lab 2010
Electrolux Design Lab 2010 invites global undergraduate and graduate industrial design students to create home appliances that consider shrinking domestic spaces. Your ideas will shape how people prepare and store food, wash clothes, and do dishes in the homes of 2050, when 74 percent of the world’s population is predicted to live in an urban environment. Growing populations living in concentrated areas dictate a need for greater space efficiency. This year, special consideration will be given to designers that submit a design within the context of a range or suite of solutions/appliances. Your design ideas should address key consumer requirements: being green, adapting to time and space, and allowing for individualization.
Submission deadline: May 1

New Aging Award 2010
Banal and indifferent architecture can become a barrier as people age, exacerbating physical limitations, and paradoxically increasing both social isolation and dependency. The New Aging Award will recognize designs that enable the aging and elderly to lead a life of dignity. The award is open to any architectural project designed for, or including, a single person or a group of people who are 55 and older. The designs may range from a private house to an assisted living facility, nursing home, or continuing-care retirement facility. The requirements for submission are a minimum of three images, a 150-250 word description, and credit for the entire team. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of architectural and social innovation.
Submission deadline: May 3

The Earth Awards
The Earth Awards is a global search for creative, sustainable solutions and innovations designed for the 21st century. In 2010, we’re inviting a worldwide audience of designers, architects, innovators, and creative thinkers to submit their idea or innovation in one of the following six categories: Product, Future, Built Environment, Social Justice, Fashion, or Systems. All finalists will have the unique opportunity to pitch their project to world business leaders, who will help them to transform their designs into market-ready solutions.
Submission deadline: May 10

2010 YAF/COD Ideas Competition: Temporary/Permanent Relief Housing
The AIA Young Architects Forum (YAF) and the AIA Committee on Design (COD) invite architects, students, and allied design professionals to submit sketches to this unique competition. This year, submitters are asked to explore the issue of temporary relief housing that could have a permanent function, through a concept design problem. Design temporary relief housing for refugees from natural or other disasters using sustainable strategies and following the Living Building Challenge. The proposed solutions should provide housing for approximately 500 displaced families as well as the necessary support services. Winners will have their work exhibited at the 2010 AIA National Convention, in Miami June 10–12; selected entries will also be displayed on the AIA Web site.
Submission deadline: May 10

ADC Young Guns 8
ADC Young Guns is the only international, cross-disciplinary, portfolio-based awards competition that identifies today’s vanguard of young creatives. It is open to creatives age 30 or under who have worked in the industry at least two years, either full-time or freelance. Eligible entrants can submit a combination of both professional and personal work in graphic design, photography, illustration, advertising and art direction, environmental design, film, animation, video, interactive design, object design, and typography. Judging is done by a panel of past ADC Young Guns winners.
Submission deadline: May 12

The Living Climate Change Video Challenge
IDEO and Design 21 are calling for an original video that envisions how climate change will impact life on Earth over the next 20 to 30 years. What behaviors will need to change? Which will we choose to preserve? The Living Climate Change Video Challenge is an open invitation to designers and non-designers alike to think creatively about an issue that impacts us all.
Submission deadline: May 25

Build a Better Burb: An Ideas Competition to Retrofit Long Island Downtowns
Suburbia is not as built out as it seems. Consider the mapping of 8,300 acres of opportunity—vacant parcels and parking lots—in the many small downtowns of the country’s “first suburbs” on Long Island. On the occasion of the release of these revealing new interactive maps, the Long Island Index invites all architects, urban designers, planners, students, visionaries, and everyone else interested in shaping our suburbs’ future to help us “Build a Better Burb.” This ideas competition seeks bold design proposals for retrofitting underutilized asphalt in suburban downtowns into innovative and surprising new uses, forms and urbanisms. The best ideas, designs, images, and videos will be selected as finalists by a diverse jury of distinguished academics and professionals and exhibited online. Cash prizes totaling $22,500 will also be awarded.
Submission deadline: June 21

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