Archinect - News

RISD students team up with AARP to demonstrate the potential of ADUs to lawmakers

2024-02-15T15:25:00-05:00

Students at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) recently collaborated with the state’s local AARP on a design-research project that was meant to demonstrate the potential of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) to lawmakers currently looking at alternatives to boost housing production and care for an aging population.

The project was spearheaded by RISD faculty member Elizabeth Debs as part of the Interior Architecture department’s annual design charette challenge this past November. She says: “We look for opportunities to use design as a way to explore pressing community needs with collaborators who are experts in their fields. By working with [the] AARP, students quickly learned important strategies for aging in place as well as universal design approaches they will use throughout their careers.”

Photo by Jaime Marland, image courtesy Rhode Island School of Design.

Teams were limited to a 900-square-foot footprint for their designs, which also included considerations for primary st...

National Air and Space Museum Holds Architecture Challenge for Architecture Students and Young Professionals

2023-03-17T15:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum recently announced its Student Architecture and Design Challenge for the design of an element for its new Bezos Learning Center. Through this challenge, teams of architecture and design students and early-career architects will be challenged to design an architectural element for the exterior structure that visualizes and communicates scientific, aviation, astronomy or aerospace concepts in an effective way. It is free to both apply and participate in this challenge.

The competition invites students to propose a new design that will sit next to the current museum. Image courtesy of The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

ELIGIBILITY

As a team challenge, all entries must be composed of teams of two or three people. Teams can consist of a mixture of design and/or architecture students, recent graduates, and professionals with experience of five years or less.

Not s...

FIU Architecture students are getting their feet wet thanks to this long-standing campus tradition

2022-11-17T17:45:00-05:00

This is the 33rd year the "Walking on Water" competition has been held at FIU as part of Professor Jaime Canaves’ Materials & Methods of Construction course. As reported by WSVN Miami , "Not many people can say they can walk on water, but these second-year architecture students at Florida International University need to do in order to get a good grade in the class."

Winners receive $1,000 plus another $1,000 bonus if they can surmount the record, while those whose shoes do not succeed can either swim the expanse in the event for a C grade or, "if they fell and gave up, it was a straight F," reports Dannielle Garcia of WSVN.

Walking on Water at FIU. Video courtesy of FIU The College Tour.

According to Canaves, “The purpose of the assignment is for the students to design and build shoes to be able to cross the lake 175 feet." Students were tasked with researching materials and "put them together and solve the problem of floating and walking, and if they’re successful, they get an A....

The International Velux Award Announces 2022 Regional Winners

2022-07-08T19:30:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by VELUX

The 2022 edition of the International VELUX Award, a biannual international student ideas competition endorsed by the UIA since 2004, has announced its Regional Winners. 507 submitted projects were submitted from 211 schools of architecture around the world.

Organized around the theme, “Light of Tomorrow”, the competition invites architecture students to explore how we use sunlight and daylight for energy and light as well as how to ensure health and well-being for the people who live and work in buildings. Students may enter projects in one of two categories: Daylight in Buildings or Daylight investigations.

The 2022 jury, which included Anupama Kundoo, John Ronan, Rainer Hofmann, Fuensanta Nieto, and Lotte Kragelund met in Copenhagen to select 10 Regional Winners in the two categories, noting the “future-oriented nature of the projects … high in imagination and aspiration.” Jury chair John Ronan explained that the jury selected projects which ...

Calling all architecture students, participate in the 2022 International VELUX Award competition. Registration closes April 1, 2022

2022-03-15T13:52:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by VELUX

Every second year the VELUX Group invites the students of architecture to participate in the International VELUX Award competition on the theme “Light of Tomorrow. Since the launch in 2004, more than 10,000 students from more than 800 schools from all regions of the world have participated in the competition.

The competition invites students to explore the role of daylight in architecture. The aim is to encourage and challenge students of architecture, and to create a deeper understanding of daylight as an ever-relevant source of energy, light, and life.

For the celebratory 10th edition in 2022, the students will develop their projects in one of the two categories: ‘Daylight in buildings’ or ‘Daylight investigations.’ In order to participate in the competition, students need to register until April 1, 2022. Registration is free, and it only requires an e-mail address. After registering, the next steps are gathering the team, connecting with the t...

A global competition to redesign the Port of Beirut has been announced

2021-05-20T14:12:00-04:00

The Beirut municipality and the Inspireli Awards have announced a competition calling on architecture students from around the world to submit entries for a new Port of Beirut, following the devastating 2020 explosion that completely destroyed the port and the adjacent part of the city.

The aim of the competition is to offer humanitarian aid to Beirut through the unique designs and innovations of students’ submissions. The subject of this massive renewal project will be implemented in the curriculum of many universities around the world throughout the upcoming winter and spring semesters, with a final submission date in February 2022.

Photo: Inspireli

The new Port of Beirut will be rebuilt and financed by Lebanon’s Finance, Design, Built, Operate, and Transfer Department (F.D.B.O.T). The Port administration and the Ministry of Public Work and Transportation are currently setting their requirements and conditions list, which will shape the approach of the entries and, subsequently, ...

The University of Calgary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape is proud to announce the “CBDX: CITIES FOR ALL” competition

2020-11-07T09:00:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by the University of Calgary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

This international design ideas competition—the first in the CBDX series—asks, What does a city for all look like? How does it operate and function? How can it come into being? What place, structure, thing, system, process, or relationship must be forged to engender a more just and equitable ‘city for all’? And in particular—this is perhaps the most crucial question—the competition asks, How are these aims navigated by, through, and with the current uncertainty wrought by the ongoing global pandemic and the long-term existential threats of environmental degradation and climate change?

This is the year a wide-ranging set of inequities—that have always been there—have been brought to bear. The only difference is that now a significantly larger percentage of the public, and wider society, has become aware of how urgent addressing these issues are. As various movements have demonstra...

Students from Pratt Institute, University of Louisiana-Lafayette, and Syracuse win HERE+NOW student housing competition

2020-09-09T15:33:00-04:00

The 2020 International Housing Design student competition has announced its winning entries.

The HERE+NOW: A House for the 21st Century: 2020 Student Design Competition, led by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) in collaboration with Custom Residential Architects Network (AIA CRAN), organized an open call for housing designs that represent new "ideas of domesticity" for the 21st century.

According to the competition coordinators, "the jury selected five exceptional student projects that challenged students to envision a house for the HERE & NOW: informed by context, culture, and vernacular, but fully embracing 21st-century technology." With close to 300 project submissions and over 800 participants in the competition, it becomes clear the topic is of interest to today's students. Below are the winners of the competition as well as the jury's responses to each of the winning projects.

1st PLACE WINNER

Project: Lubec Narrows
Student: Joseph Leaming of Pratt I...