The Golden State's nickname has taken on a grave new meaning. The agricultural and economic powerhouse of the country is in the midst of a historic drought pervading the whole U.S. Southwest, at once turning sprawling front lawns into golden-brown scratch pads and inciting Chinatown-style disputes among developers, farmers, and residents over water rights. The situation is dire, and while conservation efforts are succeeding to a degree, plans must extend into the far future in order to contend with depleted reservoirs and record low-levels of groundwater. Cities can't always count on free-flowing taps.

Believing that architects are in a unique position to imagine how the built environment must adapt, Archinect is launching “Dry Futures” – a new competition seeking imaginative, pragmatic, idealist, or perhaps even dystopic, design proposals for the future of California’s drought. And the stakes couldn't be higher: in a recent op­-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote: “Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing.”

Not only is California the most populous state in country, it is by far the largest agricultural producer. According to many experts, the drought in California correlates to both unsustainable human practices and the larger product of unsustainable human activity: climate change. With current responses largely amounting to “too-little-too-late", the clock is ticking for California. Water may very well end up being the determining issue of the next century, and architects, progenitors of the built environment, have a responsibility to respond. 

Dry Futures is divided into two categories: one for speculative projects (ie. proposals that involve realities, futures or technologies not yet imagined), and one for pragmatic responses (ie. proposals that could actually be implemented within current economic and technological conditions). Submissions to Dry Futures will be reviewed by a panel of professionals suited to the multi­valent issues that the drought provokes in the built environment. 

Jurors include Allison Arieff​ (Editorial Director of SPUR), Charles Anderson (Founder/Principal of WERK), Colleen Tuite and Ian Quate (Co-Founders of GRNASFCK), Geoff Manaugh ​(Founder of BLDGBLOG), Hadley and Peter Arnold​ (Co­-Founders/Directors of the Arid Lands Institute), Jay Famiglietti​ (Senior Water Cycle Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and Peter Zellner​ (Principal and Design Lead at AECOM, Los Angeles). All competition winners will receive a custom-designed survival kit, with an additional cash prize awarded to the 1st place winner.

The competition launches today – Tuesday, July 28, 2015. Submissions will be open until Tuesday, September 1, with jury deliberations taking place September 7 ­- 11. Winners will be announced on September 14.

To submit, and for more information, visit dryfutures.com.

For any additional concerns, be in touch through dryfutures@archinect.com.