2014 Architectural League Prize: Overlay

Call for Entries: The Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers
Overlay

Submission Deadline
February 10, 2014

Jury
Preston Scott Cohen
Evan Douglis
Florian Idenburg
Jennifer Lee
Charles Renfro
Annabelle Selldorf

and the Young Architects + Designers Committee
Ajmal Aqtash
Beat Schenk
Bryan Young

Download a PDF of this Call for Entries here.

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. The jury will select work for presentation in lectures, digital media, and an exhibition opening in June 2014. 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.

Established in 1981 to recognize exemplary and provocative work by young practitioners and to provide a public forum for the exchange of their ideas, the Architectural League Prize is organized by The Architectural League and its Young Architects + Designers Committee. For a list of past winners, click here.

Theme
Overlay
Historically, overlays were iterative design methods enacted through the superimposition of lines, notations, and marks. Work was developed incrementally as a serial process that revealed solutions. In the more recent past, we have seen morphological and diagrammatic sequences as conceptual overlays, animating a series of steps as instructions towards conclusive configurations. In a different manner today, notational overlays are currently used to position a single or collective project within a perceived framework.

We want to see overlay as it directs–rather than merely reconstructs–your process. We are interested in how overlay (iterative, conceptual, and notational) drives discourse, tension between iterations, design solutions, and the parameters by which work is reviewed. Overlay is unique to the designer; the techniques developed are activated overtime with layered meanings to push architectural concepts.

Overlay might include graphic, written, researched, and verbal references for reading your work. Overlay might also be the literal mapping of effects upon a surface. Pattern, ornamentation, decoration, tiling, and finishes are overlays, integrally engaged or superficially applied. These overlays may emerge from the project or at times become the project, especially as the means and opportunities for young architects to build is often limited.

Thus submissions might include interpretations of overlay that vary from process to presentation to product to shape and establish your identity as a young practice.

Eligibility
The competition is open only to current, full-time residents, who need not be citizens, of the United States, Canada, or 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 10, 2014 or postmarked by that date.

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.

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).

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 2014. 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.

Entries must be received at the League office by 5:00 p.m., February 10, 2014, or postmarked by this date. There will be no exceptions to this deadline.

Winning entrants will be notified by mid-March 2014.

Entry Forms
Entry Form
Partner Acknowledgement Form
Collaborator Acknowledgement Form

Architectural League Program Director
Anne Rieselbach

Support
This program is made possible by corporate support from Dornbracht, Microsol Resources, Monadnock Construction, Inc., and Tischler und Sohn.

League programs are also made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.  Support is also provided by the Next Generation Fund, an alumni fund of The Architectural League’s Emerging Voices and Architectural League Prize programs.