Airbnb is making a new $10 million investment in design with a new project called the OMG! Fund that will commission “100 of the craziest and most unique property ideas” in a design contest open to architects, designers, and the public across the globe.
The contest’s brief’s sole stipulation is that the final product be listed exclusively on Airbnb for at least a year. This is an expansion of the short-term rental company’s $1 million Unique Airbnb Fund, which was slated to award the same $100,000 grant to a group of 10 projects before Covid-19 brought an end to the endeavor. In a press release, the company said its new initiative is “shaped in part by the growing trend of flexible living that has emerged in the past two years.”
Architect Koichi Takada is one of the contest’s judges, joined by superhost Kirstie Wolfe, the designer of Boise's famed Potato Hotel, fashion and interior design icon Iris Apfe, and AirBnb's VP of Experiential Bruce Vaughn. The four-member jury will review submissions for a period of several months before announcing a winner next year. Airbnb says the designs will be judged along lines of Originality, Feasibility, Experience, and Sustainability.
The contest helps serve as a marketing tool for Airbnb’s new Categories feature, which it says has generated 2.5 million clicks since debuting last month. The company says more than 30,000 rental units were added to its platform in the last year alone, which allows us some real data to put behind attendant rental market squeezes in New York City, and the ongoing changes redefining the vernacular landscape in areas like Joshua Tree, California.
Related on Archinect: Airbnb celebrates London's Deregulation Act with floating house on River Thames
Airbnb's 13-year history has produced some rather creative contests and design initiatives aimed at attracting vacationers and providing emergency housing to victims of natural disasters. Winners will have a chance to see their designs join unique stays like the BIG-designed LEGO House in Billund, Denmark and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Cooke House in Virginia Beach.
More information about the contest, including application procedures, can be found by following the link here.
11 Comments
Another exploitation and assault on the definition 'Architecture'. Sounds innocent right? No. All these endlessly recycled ideas of cheap irony... It definitely pollutes our efforts as an architecture community to explain what is architecture to the public.
"Wacky design! Oh yeah, it's architecture. Did you guys see that building looks like underwear? Oh man, we love it!"
I call 'em Showroom Architecture - essentially props for social media. Almost like set design, where the architecture is in a liminal territory somewhere between total props and full functional. The lights work, so there is electricity. There are toilet fixtures - but there is no water. All 4 walls are present ... but there's no ceiling. The doors open and even lock, but lead to nowhere. It's just real enough to be temporarily occupied and look the part of a "real" space on Instagram. But the ruse is not meant to last for too long ... They're par for the course when it comes to installations, fun houses (Museum of Ice Cream and its ilk), and stage sets. Yet there are more real, permanent spaces getting this treatment now - sometimes just surface deep, othertimes and more indisiduously the whole programming and space receive the IG filter applique.
But Orhan, a counterpoint is, what is the definition of Architecture? Id prefer to see an underwear building than one of those endless stumpies with similar floor plans and slightly modified facades.
For example, this is the world's most booked AirBNB and I love it. So much better than the garbage that keeps propping up all around us by Architects (with a capital A)
I guess I need to register for the party and start working on the 'underwear inn' ;)))))))
Do it!
What a joke you are! I am laughing to your unbearable lightness. hahaha..
While the examples in the article do not express what I would consider Architecture of the finest order, I do appreciate the spirit of the contest and look forward to seeing what comes to fruition.
How about designing an Airbnb that supports 2 subsidized workforce housing units, so Airbnb can potentially start to address a part of the affordable housing issues they have been exacerbating from the start. or is that TOO crazy?
Fuck tech disruptors.
we just want affordable shelter
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