The Laka Foundation has announced winners for its fifth edition of Laka Competition 2020: "Architecture That Reacts". The competition's 2020 edition attracted more than 350 participants from 40 countries. 

Over 200 entries were given thorough consideration by the international panel of Judges. The subject of the competition is architectural, urban, technological, or product design that is capable of dynamic interaction with its social, natural, or built surroundings. 

The main focus of the competition is on solutions developed through a process of changes and adjustments. Achieving such a goal requires an interdisciplinary approach that often goes beyond typical solutions. 

The winning projects often took advantages from disciplines such as robotics, mechanics, digital fabrication, bio-design and bio-fabrication, computational design, materials science, bio-architecture, social sciences, industrial design, mobility, and more.

The jury panel composed of: Daan Roosegaarde (artist, innovator, founder of Studio Roosegaarde), Emma van der Leest (biodesigner, product designer, founder of the BlueCity lab), Elizabeth Monoian (artist, founding director of LAGI, cofounder of Studied Impact), Robert Ferry (architect, founding director of LAGI and Studied Impact), Dr. Peter Kuczia (architect, initiator and curator of the ‘Design that Educates Awards’).

The competition selected Winner of The Year 2020, Laureates of the Gold Prize, Silver Prize, and Bronze Prize and 10 Honorable Mentions. 

See all winning projects for Laka Competition 2020:

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Winner for the year 2020: The Ark by Safia Dziri, Megan Stenftenagel, Matt Turlock, with the participation of Emiel Cockx from USA

"Rising ocean levels and the near-ubiquitous response across design fields to solve this issue with an intervention to the urban fabric introduces a unique and topical design space. Should architecture combat or greet rising waters? Is flooding a disaster or source of beauty? Is waterfront property abandoned, or clad in durable materials? Ark proposes a reactive architecture that attempts to preserve urban fabrics at risk of flooding while simultaneously expanding and exciting existing spaces."

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Laureate of Gold Prize: Glacier Metamorphosis by Aasish Janardhanan from Italy 

"Though the earth is always changing, the current speed of change is unprecedented and problematic.  The drastic shreds of evidence in the high-altitude areas especially in the Alps give a clear definition of climate change and its impacts. Reduction in snow cover at lower altitudes, receding glaciers, melting permafrost extreme change in temperature and precipitation are the ways by which Alps proves the impact."

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Laureate of Silver Prize: Church of the Otakus by Zhiyi Chen from USA/China 

"Based on Post-secularism, the project intends to raise the awareness of the ongoing social phenomenon and its reflection upon architectural discipline. It foresees a future scenario in which religion and the banal world are synthetically combined, and actively involves public interaction in the physical space."

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Laureate of Bronze Prize: The Desalination Generation by Joseph Shenton from UK

"(...) Due to the inaction of developed global communities, those most vulnerable will likely have to accept this sea level rise and have to adapt to the oncoming changes to farmland and coastal urban communities. The majority of land under threat is located throughout developing countries across Asia, where chronic flooding is set to affect areas that contain 10% of their populations. Without adapting, these communities will likely become climate refugees."

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Honorable mention: The Rebirth of Karez: Oasis Plan by Yuxuan Cai, Zehua Bian, Yuxuan Dai from China

"In recent years, the number of Karez in Xinjiang began to decline sharply. We put forward a set of methods to solve the problem of Karez becoming dry gradually. In the 1950s, there were as many as 1700 wells in Xinjiang. With the continuous drying up, by the end of the 1980s, the number of Karez wells had dropped to more than 860. Therefore, we hope to design a device to extract water from the air."

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Honorable mention: Breaking the 4th Wall by Ahmad Hafez, Nezar Abualhalaweh, Hamzeh Al-Thweib

"As we live in a rapidly expanding and developing states, where people’s interest along with the demand for an ever-expanding open market, have drastically changed the way that we live to a more flexibly adapting act, where people are no longer fixed to a particular city and where jobs and lives occur all over the globe and are not dependent on a specific country. Here our project challenges the boundaries for creating architectural spaces that would fit this notion of rapid movement and adaptability to one’s own needs."

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Honorable mention: Protocell by Monika Kalinowska, Denys Karandiuk from Austria

"Protocell is a system which allows inhabitants to develop their own elastic spatial concept. It gives the possibility to build fully custom designed house for a price of cheap prefabricated housing. Furthermore, with the expansion owners are engaging and contributing to the development of the public space. Our project is aiming at cooperation between human, nature and technology."

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Honorable mention: Two Pieces and a Rubber Band by Santiago Diaz Giral

"In times of hardship, when we find so many people getting displaced from their homes due to wars and natural disasters, we need to find new plausible ways of providing them with shelters where they can carry on with their lives with dignity. That’s how the idea for this project came about."

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Honorable mention: Worm Space by Zi Kang Lim

"Worm Space - a soil bank set in Kew Gardens - imagines the imminent extinction of top soil in the face of rapidly dwindling arable land. The project celebrates top soil as a valuable commodity and cultivates it through a contextualised heat microclimate in a new landform."

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Honorable mention: Mycokarst by Anna Budnikova (M-A SPACE) from Russia 

"The `Mycokarst` project addresses the challenge of karst sinkholes in urban environment. Karst sinkhole is the world unique phenomenon that is caused by the groundwater movement inside the soluble ground rocks. The underlying bedrock is composed of material, such as gypsum or dolomite (carbonates), which can be slowly dissolved by water, leading to a variety of caves, craters, basins, karst logs, ravines, valleys and canyons. There are sinkholes with unique morphologies around the world - Antarctica covered with ice-covered shell, Russia, USA, China, Africa and other regions."

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Honorable mention: Adaptation In Augmentation by Author: Md. Shariful Alam Anik

"We love spending hours harvesting crops in ‘Heyday’ through our tiny smartphone. We like to develop our virtual world, arrange internal stuff according to our decisions and let people know about our creativity. Why people don’t prefer doing these in reality? Isn’t it beautiful to come out of your limitations through the cheapest and easiest way available?"

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Honorable mention: Climatree by Raymond McGreal

"Climatree is a standalone rainwater harvesting tower and solar-powered climate monitoring station. It has been designed to show people that climate change is not just doom and gloom and that it can, in fact, be beautiful. It aims to show how tackling climate change can create a positive vision for the future; a future people will actually desire. It’s not just a rainwater harvesting tower, it’s also a piece of functional public art created to raise awareness and inspire climate change action."

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Honorable mention: Regen Pods: A multifaceted design approach for tomorrow by Authors (Dada, Deo Alrashid Alam Design Architecture): Deo Alrashid Trevecedo Alam, Franz Christopher Berania Diaz, Matthew Geo Navarro Ravago, Amador Jr Rosales Belgica, Theodore Andre Ramos Guttierez, Kiezl Legaspi Salvador, Denise Rose Dy Chang

"In this age of hyperconnectivity and intense development, the underlying reality that everything is intertwined has become too evident to ignore. Consequences from what used to be discrete issues augment each other to create bigger dilemmas. This project, entitled REGEN PODS, recognizes the need for a multifaceted approach where different solutions are compounded as well in order to produce an impact larger than if each were carried out independently."

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Honorable mention: Mod City by Fernando Meseguer Zapata from USA/Spain 

"In 1935, Le Corbusier proclaimed: "The airplane is the symbol of the new age" Nearly 100 years later, current airports struggle to physically expand, contract and adapt to continually changing flows, landscapes, climates, political atmospheres and technologies. Inspired by the futuristic visions of Archigram, New Babylon and Cedric Price’s electronically controlled Generator project, this proposal seeks to leave the airport building at the mercy of AI."

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