Open Agenda Competition

Open Agenda is an annual competition aimed at supporting a new generation of experimental architecture in Australia. Graduates from a professional Australian or New Zealand degree in architecture in the last ten years are invited to submit a proposal for an architectural design research project, to be developed, exhibited and published in 2012.

They are looking for text and graphic based proposals, and will award $6000 seed funding to three exceptional submissions. Registrations close 27^th May 2012, with final PDF Submissions due on the 30^th May 2012.

They have previously had entries from New Zealand, Vic, ACT, Qld and NSW, but no entries from NT, SA or WA, which they are keen to remedy. The Open Agenda exhibition will open at Customs House in Sydney as part of the 2012 Sydney Architecture Festival, with a public lecture and launch of the 2011 Open Agenda publication.

For more information see http://www.utsarchitecture.net/openagenda/

or email: openagenda@uts.edu.au

Boral Blues

After a long session, the athletes are tired and drained. Many schemes for a small brick factory have been generated, designed and discarded. Eventually the ideas exhausted, the team collapsed on the sidelines.

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CAPITheticAL

BCC has been missing in action because we've been working on our proposition for the CAPITheticAL competition - click on the image below to view our submission!

Capithetical (Meeting No.1)

CAPITheticAL

CAPITheticAL invites you to review the debates, influences and processes that led to the competition in 1911–12 for the design of Canberra as Australia’s national capital and imagine how an Australian national capital might be created in the 21st century.

THE TASK

CAPITheticAL invites responses to many questions, including:

Would you build a new capital today or could the Australian Federation be expressed in a different way?
Would it be a city in the conventional sense or not? If not, what form might it take?
What ideas would drive its design and development?
How would 21st century social, political and environmental factors influence the nature of the city?
Of what should our national capital consist?

Read more >>

2011 Think Brick Awards

Entries are open for the 2011 Think Brick Awards:
About Face Award (invited competition)
About Face Student Award (open student competition)
Open Face (open competition) - new category this year!
Horbury Hunt Award (built work)

The invited architectural practices are:
Trent Woods and Jennie Officer - Officer Woods of WA
Adrian Spence - Richards & Spence of QLD
Olivia Hyde - BVN of NSW
Chris Bosse - LAVA of NSW
Ian McDougall - ARM of VIC
Thomas Bailey, Nathan Crump, Aaron Roberts and James Wilson - Room 11 of TAS and MEL


Here is a snippet from the program and setting for the open competition:

'The brief calls for the design of a model dwelling to accommodate 4 people. The dwelling should incorporate up to a maximum 12,000 bricks – half the number of bricks used in the average interwar suburban bungalow on a typical quarter acre lot. The dwelling should be considered within its context, and like the humble brick, designed to be enduring. Participants will select their own site based on a specific suburban location, or else describe a setting in generic terms. Significantly, the project should demonstrate a shift in thinking about the suburban house and encourage innovative approaches to the densification of our suburbs.'

See About Face Student / Open Face brief PDF.

Superstudio National results are out!

Firstly, three cheers for our Creative Directors: Kathryn, Amanda and Mary!

Winners:
Tamarind Taylor, Elliot Harvie and Sam Bowstead (University of Queensland)
Holographic Pony



(I approve of their holograph precedent! 'Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.')

Highly Commended:
BroTown (NZ)
Traffic (WA)
The Epic Adventure (VIC)
The Green-Gauge Initiative (NSW)

About Face 2010

Wow, Curtin takes the cake this year with winner and two highly commended entries! Well done to Realino, Prunella and Rebecca!

About Face Student Award 2010

There will be a special edition Brown Bag on this :)

The winner of About Face 2010 was Durbach Block. Terroir and NMBW Architecture Studio were highly commended, and spaceagency received the peer award.

About Face 2010