2015 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers: Authenticity

Call for Entries: 2015 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers: Authenticity

This competition is now closed. The winners are: Dan Adams and Marie Adams, Landing Studio, Somerville, MA; Erin Besler, Besler & Sons, Los Angeles, CA; Seth McDowell and Rychiee Espinosa, mcdowellespinosa, Scottsville, Miami Web Design, VA and Brooklyn, NY; Thom Moran, Ann Arbor, MI; Anna Neimark and Andrew Atwood, First Office, Los Angeles, CA; Clark Thenhaus, Endemic, Ann Arbor, MI

For more information about this year’s winners, the theme of Authenticity, lectures, and exhibition information, visit the League Prize feature here.

Competition Deadline:
Tuesday, February 17, 2015 5:00 p.m.

Jury
Keller Easterling
Sanford Kwinter
Michael Meredith
Lyn Rice
Billie Tsien

and the Young Architects + Designers Committee
Carrie Norman
John Rhett Russo
Jenny Sabin

Click here to download the competition poster.

Call for Entries
Young architects and designers are invited to submit work to the annual Architectural League Prize Competition. Projects of all types, either theoretical or real, and executed in any medium, are welcome.

Established in 1981 to recognize visionary work by young practitioners, the Architectural League Prize is an annual competition, lecture series, and exhibition organized by The Architectural League and its Young Architects + Designers Committee.

Theme
Authenticity
Historically, authenticity was contingent on the value of originality, intimating the significance of an origin. Before advancements in technical reproduction challenged this stability, an original was easy to distinguish. For the Greeks, copying took only two forms: stamping and casting – everything else was considered an original.

Today, this is no longer a stable dichotomy, and the contingency is decoupling. Sampling, appropriating, hacking, and copying are among our contemporary modes of creative production. Like photography, digital platforms present us with devices, tools, and methods in which copies can be made indistinguishable from originals. Further, parametric and generative design strategies have offered alternative design methods whose very nature challenge the notion of origin and copy through the investigation of the interrelationships of parts to their wholes, and emergent self-organized pattern systems at multiple scales and applications. Consequently, we are presented with an infinite number of variegated parts or objects that are of a continuous series. Similarly, disciplinary boundaries continue to be transformed in the presence of inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborative processes, where authorship can be viewed as horizontal and pluralistic. Recent advances in computation, visualization, material intelligence, and fabrication technologies have begun to alter fundamentally our theoretical understanding of general design principles as well as the architect’s role and practical approach towards architecture and research.

In light of these realities we seek proposals that cultivate new positions of authenticity within architecture. The path to obtaining an original voice involves authenticating these positions. We want to see authenticity as a pursuit rather than a form of validation or an essential quality. We are interested in how design, technology, and practice challenge authenticity and the ways that originality, expression, and authorship continue to be pursued. How do we situate these new conceptual frameworks? Thus, submissions might re-examine authenticity through form, design, substance, function, context, or any other means that continue to direct and transform your practice.

Award
Winners will present their work in lectures, digital media, and an exhibition in June 2015. Winners will receive a cash prize of $1,000. A catalogue of winning work will be published by The Architectural League and Princeton Architectural Press.

Eligibility
The competition is only open to current, full-time residents, who need not be citizens, of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Entrants must be ten years or less out of undergraduate or graduate school. Entrants must submit individually or as a group. If the individual(s) is/are the sole principal(s) of a firm, the winning firm name will be listed as well. Entrants must submit work done independently; no work done as an employee of a firm, where the entrant is not a principal or partner, is eligible for submission. No student work completed for any academic program or degree is eligible for submission. Educators may not include work done in their studios or for their teaching. Past League Prize winners are ineligible. If only one partner of a firm is eligible, he or she can enter as a single entrant. He or she must include a signed document from all other partners outlining the collaborative nature of the work and the firm will not be listed as a recipient of the Prize. Collaborative work between unrelated firms or individuals is eligible if the partnership is equal; any project with collaborators must include a signed document from the other collaborator(s) outlining the collaborative nature of the work. Collaborative work will be considered within the context of an individual’s complete portfolio.

Submission requirements
The competition theme is given as a basis for young architects and designers to reflect upon and reevaluate their work. A written statement not to exceed 250 words is required, which defines and considers the work under the rubric of the competition theme. Significant weight is given to how an applicant’s work addresses the theme.

A single portfolio, which may include several projects, must be bound and no larger than 11″ x 14″. The portfolio may not contain more than thirty double-sided pages. CDs, models, slides, and transparencies will not be accepted. Entries must be received at the League office by 5:00 p.m. February 17, 2015 or postmarked by that date.

Entry fee
Each entrant must submit an entry fee of $25. Entrants may pay the fee online here or include with their submission cash or a check payable to “The Architectural League of New York.” Please be sure, if paying online, that the credit card holder is the name of one of the entrants; we are unable to accept payments made on behalf of others.

Entry forms
Each submission must include an entry form. Insert the form, intact, into an unsealed envelope attached to the inside back cover of the submission. To maintain anonymity, no identification of the entrant may appear on any part of the submission, except on the entry form and return envelope (see below).
If relevant, please also include a collaborator acknowledgment and/or apartner acknowledgment form.

Portfolio return
Portfolios will be returned by mail only if a self-addressed envelope with postage is also enclosed. Please ensure that return postage does not expire before August 2015. The Architectural League assumes no liability for original drawings. The League will take every precaution to return submissions intact, but can assume no responsibility for loss or damage. Portfolios may be discarded after one year if no return envelope is provided.

Competition Deadline February 17, 2015
Entries must be received at the League office by 5:00 p.m. or postmarked by this date. There will be no exceptions to this deadline.

Selection
Winning entrants will be notified by mid-March 2015.

Questions
Applicants may email questions to Program Associate Jessica Liss, liss@archleague.org.

Architectural League Program Director
Anne Rieselbach

The Architectural League Prize is made possible by Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, Suzanne Tick, and Tischler und Sohn. Support is also provided by the Next Generation Fund, an alumni fund of The Architectural League’s Emerging Voices and Architectural League Prize programs.

League programs are made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.