House Challenge has announced its annual international design competition about Desert House to promote ideas of exploring the possibilities for living in harsh environments.

House Challenge has announced its annual international design competition: House Challenge 2019 – Desert House. The competition is designed to challenge and seek the creation of a temporary dwelling with ideas and concepts in architectural design, landscape design and site planning. The aim of this competition is to promote our ideas of exploring the possibilities for living in harsh environments, as well as simultaneously raising awareness of the environmental sustainability.

This year’s competition focuses on the Desert House, an extraordinary architectural type with creative design methods to adjust the demands of a house to a specific site environment. Entrants are challenged to conceive a new and original concept for temporary house in the desert, however not strictly limited to the style of ‘residence’. A degree of flexibility and alternative choices are allowed, for example ‘portable cabin’ or ‘ transportable home’, provided it is backed up with adequate justification. The project location is defined as a ‘desert area’.

The competition seeks the creation of a temporary dwelling for a group of 4-6 people to live comfortably with ideas and concepts in architectural design with site planning. Provided the site is located in a desert and belongs to a community with similar houses, possible solutions about plumbing and electricity should be figured out. Your designed desert house has to feature the most basic components for people to live around 90 days. We also encourage the creation of new living style which is not only limited for houses, but also can be like pavilions, structures, or landscape.

Whoever you are students or professional architects, or experienced designers, working individually or in teams, we warmly welcome you to take participate in this competition. Winning participants will receive cash prize with certificate. The total prizes are $1,000, including $500 for the first place winner. Winning projects will be posted on the official website as a competition portfolio with exhibition launched.

Schedule

Jun 1 Competition Launch
Jun 1 – Jun 30 Pre-Registration
Jul 1 – Jul 31 Early-bird Registration
Aug 1 – Aug 31 Standard Registration
Sep 1 – Sep 30 Last-minute Registration
Oct 1 Submission Deadline
Oct 1 – Dec 10 Jury Deliberation
Dec 15 Announcement of Winners

Note: All deadlines are 09:00 am GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)

Awards

First Prize - $500 + Certificate + Portfolio Publication
Second Prize - $300 + Certificate + Portfolio Publication
Third Prize - $200 + Certificate + Portfolio Publication
10 Honorable Mentions to be published on the official website

Jury

The Jury is open, professional and anonymous. The Jury members are the key to a good contest. Their experience and the method for evaluation are the best guarantee to ensure transparency and level it. An independent jury of design professionals and/or stakeholders have be formed to ensure an equitable selection process. We’ve invited several professional architects, designers, artists, university professors to join in the Jury team. The process is open and anonymous, in other words the identities of the entrant and creative team are not revealed to the jury. The Jury should include a mix of people with specialist skills and knowledge. The composition is important, as it plays a significant role in generating interest and participation from the widest possible cross-section of competitors. The Jury must engender the respect of the design community. The Jury should be impartial, knowledgeable, and commit sufficient time and energy to the deliberations process. The competition organizer retains the right to disqualify any entry that does not meet the program requirements or that presents a conflict of interest. Following the jury deliberations, winners will be notified by e-mail. The jury will select freely and autonomously one proposal among all the projects delivered, which complies with the rules and guidelines established by these basis. The jury may exclude the works for the following reasons: 

• Delivery outside or without complying with the provisions of the basis period.

• Breach of anonymity, either because they revealed authorship by any means, either by presenting identification graphic elements of the identity of the author of the proposal.

• Any attempt at communication or pressure the members of the jury, duly accredited.

Full list of Jury members can be checked here.

Eligibility

Competitions are open to all architects, designers or thinkers who want to show their solution to the issues we propose. Whoever you are students or professional architects, or experienced designers, working individually or in teams, we warmly welcome you to take participate in this competition.

No professional qualification is required. But architects or students associated with members of the jury are not permitted to enter. Employees or firms represented on the jury, students from schools where a juror teaches and employees of traffic and their family members may not participate in this year’s competition.

Design proposals can be developed individually or by teams (5 team members maximum). One person could enter as an individual entry or a part of team entry. It is also possible for one team to enter multiple entries. But be aware of that, one registration/payment is only for one submitted entry.

Entrants may enter as often as they like, but each entry must be submitted separately. Teams who wish to submit multiple designs can register their team multiple times.

Requirements

General Requirements

1. The project area is defined as a ‘desert area’.

2. The competition seeks the creation of a temporary dwelling for a group of 4-6 people to live comfortably with ideas and concepts in architectural design with site planning.

3. Your designed desert house has to feature the most basic components for people to live around 90 days.

4. Provided the site is located in a desert and belongs to a community with similar houses, possible solutions about plumbing and electricity should be figured out.

5. Entrants are challenged to conceive a new and original concept for temporary house in the desert, however not strictly limited to the style of ‘residence’. A degree of flexibility and alternative choices are allowed, for example ‘portable cabin’ or ‘ transportable home’, provided it is backed up with adequate justification.

6. There is not any specific site location for this competition, as it mainly collects ideas and concepts and aims to create an exemplary prototype for all the new houses to follow. Applicant shall choose a fictional location for their conceptual idea and proceed a design work. We also encourage the creation of new living style which is not only limited for houses, but also can be like pavilions, structures, or landscape.

7. The design philosophy should be affordable, practical, convenient, efficient and easy to construct. The house plan should NOT be in relatively large scale.

8. The topography and landforms can be also customized. Entrants might add other elements that probably support your theme. Please note that your designed house will be produced in desert that when putting together on site, reflects your identical design intent and specifications of the most sophisticated facility.

Submitted Entries (Recommended submission content)

1. General plans and layouts of the project, including floor plans and sections, scaled adequately to ensure reading and comprehension of the plans. Please note that we suggest using common scale for your designed floor plan, elevations, sections, details, diagrams and perspectives. Participants are allowed to choose flexible and alternative choices, provided it is backed up with adequate justification to explain their design philosophy in the most efficient manner.

2. Diagrams, views, sketches, renderings, or any other form of visual representation that will help explain the project. But video files are NOT accepted. Photographs of models can be included and accepted.

3. Constructive details that are considered optional to explain the project. This is an ideas competition and there is no intention that the winning entry will be built.

4. The image or board must comply with the following format: your design must be presented in oriented A1 sheet (841mm×594mm), both horizontal display and vertical display are accepted. Minimum 72 dpi, and only JPG will be accepted. The file must be no larger than 12 MB in order to facilitate uploads and downloads. Other formats or delivery won’t be accepted, and only the projects uploaded on time will be on the contest.

5. A 450 word-long (maximum) descriptive text. Any text or description can only be delivered in English. The content must be presented on the panel instead of being attached in a separate txt file.

6. It’s only allowed to submit one A1 board for each final work. One person could participate as an individual entry or a part of team entry. It is also possible for one team to enter multiple entries. But be aware of that, one registration/payment is only for one submitted entry.

7. Since the contest is anonymous, the names of participants must NOT be presented on the sheet with the images and in the name of the file to be sent. The name of submitted image file must be your Team Code, eg T8FNW7CV.jpg . Your Team Code will be sent by email within 72 hours after the registration and payment process. Remember that the code is unique and valid for each submitted entry.

8. The submission should be mailed to [email protected] with your Team Code. In case of any query, please contact us at [email protected]

Register to the competition from here and to read more details please visit the competition's website.

Top image courtesy of House Challenge

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