ARCHITECTURE COMPETITIONS

Do you know which the main architecture competitions are? 

Maybe you have wondered why it is so important that you give a step forward by participating in architecture competitions, and what’s the benefit that you can have, specially if you are starting your architecture professional life, or if you are a final year student.

Sometimes, competitions frighten us, because we believe that we will not be able to reach the necessary level to compete against large architecture studios or recognized and experienced architects. However, participating in architectural competitions can be positive for you in many ways.

Why should you participate in an architecture competition?

1.- You will create professional relationships with people from the same field, who can help you in the future or giving ideas to improve your projects. You can even gather a large group that ends up being your working team, or those people that you know you can call, to ask for help in any professional situation you may have.

2.- You will gain visibility. Yes, being at your home working and designing hard will not make you get known no matter how good you are. However, showing your ideas to a specialized audience in architectural competitions will give you notoriety. For sure, if you win or receive an award your visibility will be greater and you have made yourself known to many studios and clients that may need new architects in their team.

3.- Your creativity and competitiveness will be upgraded and you will be able to develop ideas and concepts, perhaps not previously imagined. First of all, because your biggest ambition will be to win and therefore create something impressive, and also because knowing other projects will make you try your best in your new creations by adapting all the knowledge you have acquired. Therefore, by giving architecture competitions a chance you will open your mind and enhance your creativity and work-processes for your ideas and future projects.

Types of architecture competitions 

An architectural competition is usually organized either to build a new building through its designs or to submit new projects which contracts will be awarded by investors in order to be built, either for private or public buildings.

These are the different types of architecture competitions that you can usually find:

• Public competitions, which are planned by an organization or public administration.
• Private competitions, which are organized by developers or private entities.
• Open competitions, in which any architecture professional can participate in the international, national or regional level.
• Closed or restricted competitions, in which a pre-selection process is normally done before officially presenting the participants of the competition.
• Ideas competitions: the main objective is to generate and get to know new ideas and creative architectural projects. To build the project is not usually the purpose of this kind of competitions.
• Architecture-student competitions, which allow giving a professional jump to new graduated architects and designers who have not yet had a real opportunity to show their skills and ideas. It can actually help them to start working their professional path.

Which are the architectural competitions that I can join? 

To continue, we are going to give you some of the architectural competitions that you can find today, which you should be aware of if you want to test your skills and luck through your ideas and projects:

• Europan 15
• Architecture Student Design Challenge 2019: Affordable Living Spaces
• Call for Entries: Emergency Housing Mexico
• 24h ideas Competition 29th edition
• On Cities Workshop' Norman Foster Foundation
• Pachacamac Park: Architecture and Landscaping Competition in Lima
• New call for Concentrico: installation in Rouen, France
• Skyhive 2019: skyscraper challenge
• Spring Pavilion Amsterdam
• Hybrid Futures’19 Competition

These are just some of the architectural competitions available today, but there are many that can be found around the world. Stay tuned for the latest architecture news so you do not miss out on any opportunity! See you in the next post!