Blank Space, an online architecture competition platform, has released its new book titled "Storytelling Architecture", presenting 50 fairy tales of future worlds, published by Volume, the online publishing platform for the visual arts. Copies of the book are available at a discounted rate of £25 until Friday, December 22nd!

The crowd-funded publication brings together hyper-dreams, futuristic visions and dystopias of future world explored through the competitions of Blank Space. 

Over the past five years, the Fairy Tales architecture competition by Blank Space has captured the imagination of thousands of participants from around the world, from students and young practitioners to multinational firms and Pritzker Prize–winning architects. 

Every year, the competition reveals the social and environmental issues at the forefront of architects’ minds, with projects that capture the zeitgeist in highly imaginative narratives that dare to look deeper into architecture’s meaning and purpose. Former jury members include MoMA senior curator of design, Paola Antonelli; Nike’s senior VP of design, John Hoke; sculptor Anish Kapoor, global art critic Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Elizabeth Diller of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro. 

The otherworldly imaginations of fifty architects, artists, designers, and creators are collected in Storytelling Architecture, a new publication that presents winning projects and fan favorites from thousands of entries. 

Each story captures a rich world of internal and external space, of possibilities and warnings. They include oblique references to current events, mundane daily activities and identifiable human emotions. They make visible how we shape space, and how space shapes us.

"When we launched the Fairy Tales competition, we couldn’t have comprehended the great willingness within the architecture and design communities to tell new stories – stories that are harbingers of a new reality," said Matthew Hoffman, co-founder of Blank Space.

Chase Rynd, director of the National Building Museum, added that "The images and narratives ... are personal and powerful – a testament to the power of architecture as a world builder."

As with all Volume editions, the projects are brought together in an exquisite printed package featuring quarter-binding and rounded spine, encouraging both reading and looking.

At a higher level of support, readers can choose a cover of their own, a unique opportunity for previous entrants and finalists to personalize their copy of the book.

"The competition has proven itself as a collective exercise to show the world new ways of discussing and writing about architecture and in this most vital sense it has been a great success," said Francesca Giuliani, Cofounder of Blank Space. 

"From personal tales of inhabitation and existence, to large-scale social dystopias and musings, these stories are as universal as the buildings we inhabit," she added.

Volume is a start-up enterprise supported by independent visual-arts publisher Thames & Hudson, founded by Lucas Dietrich and Darren Wall to offer an alternative publishing model for creating, financing, producing, and selling high-quality illustrated and printed books throughout the world.

If you missed the previous editions of Fairy Tales architecture competitions, Blank Space is receiving registrations for the 5th edition of the competition, in partnership with the National Building Museum, Washington, DC. Late Registrations ($70) will be received until January 5th, 2018. 

All images courtesy of Blank Space

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