As part of the Think Space MONEY cycle, we're happy to announce that the deadline for the second competition 'MONEY — Culture and Society' is on January 31, 2014.

Pedro Gadanho [Curator of Contemporary Architecture at MoMA] is the juror of this second competition and the theme of the competition is "Building Without Money. Create a Space for Cultural Exchange." 

Are we able to design without money as we know it? Can we envisage a practice of architecture that finds its rewards through unconventional forms of compensation? As other cultural producers, can architects be seen as initiators of communal projects for which, besides contributing the design skills and problem-solving capacities, they can also research and concoct alternative sources of funding?

In the past years, we have witnessed the emergence of experimental currencies such as the bitcoin, as well as new forms of economical exchange and trade, such as crowdfunding, social money, micropayments, or time banks, all of them based on the trust and support of a given network. Coming from the fields of design and urban transformation, can these currency experiments and moneyless service exchanges be harnessed as catalysts for change? Can they be envisaged as an integral part of new forms of practice?

The competition asks for conceptual strategies and architectural expressions that may represent a new space for cultural exchange that can be built without money. Proposals are to be design-based and conceived for a location chosen by participants. Proposals must devise innovative financing models supporting the conception and construction of programs that, while based on prototypes of the urban market – from flea markets to produce exchange sites, from specialized bazaars to hacker’s forums –, can also be understood as promoters of cultural exchange.

/// SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 31 January, 24:00 CET-Central European Time

/// RESULTS: Results of the MONEY | Culture & Society Competition will be published in February 2014 on the official Think Space website.

/// AWARDS
1st prize  1.000 €
2nd prize    700 €
3rd prize     350 €

This competition is dealing with omnipresent questions that occupy individuals active in various cultural fields experiencing constraints of the system in which money is the essential means and aim. This is the second competition of the THINK SPACE Money Cycle, curated by Ethel Baraona Pohl & Cesar Reyes Najera [dpr-barcelona]

More info: Think Space