The journal LA+, published by the landscape architecture department at the University of Pennsylvania, has announced an international ideas competition with the goal of soliciting designs that “open our cities, our landscapes, and our minds to a more symbiotic existence with other species.”
LA+ CREATURE asks entrants to “first choose a nonhuman creature as your client (any species, any size, anywhere) and identify its needs (energy, shelter, procreation, movement, interaction, environment, etc.)”
The journal notes that their definition of creature is broad and even includes non-living things like viruses. “You can choose any land, sea, or avian nonhuman creature. It can be any species, any size, and live anywhere. It can be an individual creature, a specific population of creatures, an entire species, or even multiple species.” The journal has excluded plant species as the focus of competition entries, but plants can of course be used in designs to support your chosen creature’s habitat or sustenance.
As a second step, the organizers ask entrants to “design (or redesign) a place, structure, thing, system, and/or process that improves your client’s life.” Lastly, they want entrants to make sure the design increases “human awareness of and empathy towards your client’s existence.”
The competition is open to interdisciplinary teams of up to three people, which can include landscape architects, architects, engineers, planners, and artists, and other design disciplines.
Entries will be evaluated by an interdisciplinary jury that includes landscape architects Kate Orff, FASLA, found principal of SCAPE; Chris Reed, FASLA, founding director of Stoss Landscape Urbanism; and Richard Weller, FASLA, chair of chair of landscape architecture, at the University of Pennsylvania.
The judges will be looking for “conceptual rigor, research, novelty, ingenuity, imagination, and how well the design answers the brief to improve your creature’s life.”
Five winners will receive US$2,000 prizes and have their work featured in LA+ CREATURE, and 10 additional honorable mentions will also be published in the journal.
Submit your ideas by October 20, 2020. There is a US$50 entry fee.
Another competition worth exploring: The Arc. Eddy Eguavoen Foundation, which aims to build sustainable housing for communities in need across Nigeria, seeks designs for a building, structure, or master plan that helps envision the future of living with water in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. Projects should “make significant use of water space, whether floating, submerged and/or built over water.” Register by August 10 and submit by August 25.