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CBDX: BORDERLANDS brings political, geological, social and other boundaries into sharp focus

The School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (SAPL) at the University of Calgary has launched its second international design ideas competition, asking: How can designers intervene in borders?

Borders are spaces of transition. Whether political and imposed through human agency, or natural and made manifest through geographical features, borders are associated with civilization’s greatest challenges. How we choose to choreograph and intersect these transitional spaces will reveal much about our priorities. 

The competition offers $6,000 in prizes and the deadline for submissions is June 21, 2021. The international, interdisciplinary jury will announce the winning entries on September 8, 2021.

The competition asks entrants to consider the opportunities, challenges and complexities latent within borders and propose new paradigms. Participants can choose any type of border, define a friction that presents a programmatic opportunity, and propose a design that impacts the agents (human or otherwise) that are affected, influenced, or in proximity to that border.

“As humanity wakes from the immobility that has been imposed by the pandemic, the relationships that govern our world will look much different than those of just one year ago. In this transitionary phase to new tomorrows, borderlands hold immense potential as microcosms of civilization. This competition tackles a timely topic that seeks to examine urgent questions.”

— Alberto de Salvatierra, assistant professor with the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape and CBDX chair

Converging crises over the past year including the global pandemic, racial divides, geo-political conflict, and the climate emergency demand a clear focus on society’s challenges and vulnerabilities.

“Confronted with an unprecedented number of calamities and injustices, we need to reconsider how design can challenge the nature of borders and participate in their reconsideration. We have a responsibility to understand and shepherd positive future change that questions and potentially bridges these lines of division. We’re pleased with the ideas generated from our previous competition, CITIES FOR ALL, which speculated on new approaches for equitable, diverse and inclusive cities; we challenge everyone — including designers, planners, policy-makers, humanitarians and social scientists — to respond to the global condition of borderlands.”

— Dr. John L. Brown, PhD, Dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

Jury

• Luis Callejas, Director and Founder, LCLA Office (Medellin, Colombia) and Professor of Landscape Architecture, Oslo School of Architecture and Design (Oslo, Norway)
• Danika Cooper, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, UC Berkeley (Berkeley, USA)
• Clare Lyster, Founder, and Principal, CLUAA and Associate Professor of Architecture, UIC School of Architecture (Chicago, USA)
• Dima Rachid, Founding Partner, Studio Libani, and Lecturer at the American University of Beirut (Beirut, Lebanon)
• Lola Sheppard, Founding Partner, Lateral Office (Toronto, Canada) and Professor, University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Canada)
• Rania Ghosn, Founding Partner, Design Earth and Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, MIT (Cambridge, USA)
• Niall Kirkwood, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Technology and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Harvard GSD (Cambridge, USA)
• Alberto de Salvatierra, Director, Center for Civilization and Assistant Professor of Urbanism and Data in Architecture, University of Calgary SAPL (Calgary, Canada)

The CBDX Series is made possible through the support of Stantec, a global design and delivery firm. Selected entries will be exhibited in September 2021 and published in Fall 2021. CBDX is organized, in part, by the Center for Civilization.

Competition details can be found at cbdx-series.com