Submitted by WA Contents
Call for Ideas: Closed Worlds Design Competition
United States Architecture News - Oct 19, 2015 - 12:04 4409 views
Earth as seen on July 6, from a distance of almost one million miles by a NASA scientific camera on board the Deep Space Climate Observatory spacecraft. Credit: NASA.
Call for Ideas: Design Competition for Closed Worlds
Submission Deadline: Monday, November 16, 2015 11:59 ppm
What do outer space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each was conceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy. In February 2016, Storefront for Art and Architecture will open Closed Worlds, an exhibition that explores the conceptualization and production of closed systems in the history of twentieth century architecture, design, and engineering.
As part of the exhibition, Storefront is seeking a designer to produce the next in this chronology of experiments: a closed world that will inhabit Storefront's gallery space at 97 Kenmare Street.
The winning individual or team will receive a $1,500 design and management award, as well as a production budget of $12,000 for the construction, assembly, and disassembly of the closed system for the Closed Worlds exhibition.
Deadline
All applicants must register by November 10th, 2015. Final submissions are due in both digital format (before or on November 16th), and physical format (before or on November 17th). See submission details here.
Closed Worlds is an exhibition of 41 living prototypes built over the last century that present an unexplored genealogy of closed resource regeneration systems. From the space program to countercultural architectural groups experimenting with autonomous living, the exhibition documents a larger disciplinary transformation in the postwar period. Closed Worlds explores the rise of a new environmental consensus in the form of a synthetic naturalism, where the laws of nature and metabolism are displaced from the domain of wilderness to the domain of cities and buildings.