Architectural Competitions Research Articles

Experiences from launching the bridge over Gottleuba‐valley (Gottleubatalbrücke)

AbstractThis article briefly describes the project background, timelines, structural data, actually achieved milestones and current stage of project of the bridge over Gottleubavalley in Pirna, Saxony, Germany. The bridge is being built using incremental launching method, the main challenges of the launching process are briefly described together with some learning points.The winning design from the architectural competition in 2006 proposed very slender (1 to 35 !) hybrid steel‐concrete semi‐integral frame crossing the 70m deep and 1000m wide valley with nine spans (92 – 116 – 120 – 120 – 124 – 108 – 92 – 76 m) with maximum span length of 124m. The paper describes the challenges the team faced during the preparation and launching of a very slender bridge deck with deflections up to 6m when touching down at the bridge pier. By the time of the venue, the incremental launching will be already finished, and the lowering works will be in progress.

Architecture Competitions as an Opportunity for Young Women Architects. The Case of the Competition for Rural Subsidised Housing and the Canarian Magüi González, 1981-85

The Spanish democratic transition (1975-1982) was a time when architecture competitions with open and anonymous participation gradually began to appear, a phenomenon that coincided with the progressive incorporation of women architects into the discipline. The first part of this article analyses the situation of these competitions by studying their repercussions in 16 Spanish professional architectural journals belonging to both consolidated and emerging Spanish Architects’ Associations. The participation of women architects is also analysed in order to assess whether these competitions were a source of professional opportunities for them. In the second section, the article studies the Competition for Architectural Solutions for Officially Subsidised Single-Family Housing in Rural Areas (1981-83), a nationwide call with the most significant participation of architecture professionals (more than 1.000) and with a notable number of selected proposals by women architects. This study shows that women architects working in peripheral areas of the Spanish territory had a special presence in this competition, with the Canary Islands being the most remarkable case, for both the good results of its female participants and its ultra-peripheral location. Among the participating women architects, Magüi González stands out for the quality of her proposal and for being the only female professional who eventually obtained a commission from this competition. Finally, the investigation focuses, from a compositional, constructive and design culture perspective, on González’s final built project: 30 dwellings in Juan Grande in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (1983-85), which was, indeed, her opera prima and was eventually awarded an important regional architecture prize.

Inclusion of Women Architects into the Cultural Field of Spanish Competitions: Struggling for Professional Recognition from the Periphery (1978-2008)

A retrospective look at the architecture competitions held and reported in Spain between the years of transition to democracy and the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008 allows us to verify, from a sociological and historiographical approach, the progressive inclusion of women into the complex and traditionally patriarchal cultural field of the architecture competition. The end of Franco’s dictatorship, and the growing vitality of the Autonomous Regions prompted the call of numerous open consultations throughout the country. These calls continued throughout the last third of the 20th century, until eventually experiencing a decline in the new millennium. These open and anonymous competitions provided a framework in which many women architects were able to ascend through merit, even attaining important positions within the process: firstly, as recognised participants and later as jury members. Highlighting the value of these women’s contribution to architecture has always been subject to disinterest, hesitancy or even outspoken reticence, typical of an eminently patriarchal structure, to which were added those inherent to any competitive structure where the struggle for the domination of symbolic power is inescapable. On the basis of architectural journal articles and illustrative case studies, this paper reviews the published media conditions of this difficult ascent in which the subordinate territories peripheral to the centres of production of architectural culture—Madrid and Barcelona—proved to be a space of opportunity and competition in which to build professional legitimacy. A great deal of Spanish women architects who were regular contestants achieved their recognition through silent logic, far removed from flashy celebrity, an issue that has left a deep imprint on their ways of approaching the practice of their profession, in general, and of participating in the cultural field of the competition, in particular. From this common thinking, this article aims to pay them a well-deserved tribute.

IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE PLACE AND CULTURAL AWARENESS IN DESIGNING COMPETITION PROJECTS DURING STUDENTS’ WORKSHOPS

This article’s primary objective is to illustrate how an understanding of the historical and cultural context of a location can significantly enhance students’ academic workshops, fostering interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and aiding them in designing projects for international architectural competitions. Frequently, such projects tend to conform to global trends, often imitating fashionable patterns without regard for the local context, traditions, or cultural nuances. The first section of this article describes the methodology employed in international student workshops. The second section delves into the application of the problem-based learning method (PBL) when conceiving projects for architectural competitions, emphasizing the importance of factoring in historical and cultural heritage when selecting design concepts. The third section provides a comprehensive analysis of the workshop outcomes and initiates a discussion on the pivotal role of historical context and the significance of cultural awareness in this educational context.

Formation and transformation of critical modern rural architecture: the case of the Göl Village Institute Campus in Kastamonu, Türkiye

ABSTRACT Having emerged in the 1980s, the term 'critical regionalism' discusses the network of relations between the modern and the local by prioritizing the characteristics of the place. The ‘village institutes', which were established in the Anatolian rural landscape in the 1940s, were village teacher training schools that served the modernization movements in the Turkish rural scene and used local and traditional resources and knowledge for architecture and planning. Most of the planning and design projects for educational campuses were the result of 15 different national architectural competitions held between 1940 and 1943. This study discusses the dialectical relationship and transitions between modern planning approaches and local and rural architectural characteristics by utilizing the critical regionalist theory in the context of Göl Village Institute in Kastamonu. The spatial transformation of the institute’s campus, which is registered as cultural heritage and encapsulates a variety of values ranging from landscape to historical, cultural and architectural values, is discussed as a process that oscillates between critical regionalist approaches and building activities incompatible with the context. The study concludes that Göl Village Institute, which is hardly conserved despite its legal registration status as cultural heritage, implements unique modern planning and needs appropriate conservation interventions.

Public Buildings in the Architecture of Ukrainian Modernism

Among the avant-garde monuments preserved in Kharkiv and creating its unique architectural character, the buildings of workers’ clubs occupy a special place. The construction of buildings with such a function began in Kharkiv at the beginning of the 20th century, but after the October Revolution, workers’ clubs became almost the main symbol of the era, because they symbolized the desire for a new life and the creation of a new person. In the works of avant-garde architects, the club became a favorite design theme. During the architectural competitions of the early and mid-1920s, a typology of club buildings was compiled and original compositional and artistic solutions formed, which reflected a creative discussion about the development of Ukrainian architecture: the struggle against the revival of baroque trends ended with the victory of a new direction — Modernism. The architecture of Kharkiv workers’clubs in the 1920s and 1930s reflects the development trends of Ukrainian modernism, but it has its own characteristics related to both regional features and the individuality of the masters who took part in their design. Kharkiv’s clubs reflect the diversity of views of, and approaches to, form-giving by architects with different views and experience, whose buildings constitute a unique architectural heritage. The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristic features of Kharkiv workers’ clubs and determine their place in the general picture of Ukrainian modern architecture for the further development of a program for their preservation. The research uses the methods of historical-architectural, functional-structural and stylistic analysis, which includes traditional general scientific approaches. The material collected, analyzed and systematized in this article can be used for further scientific research in the field of the development of historic architecture, for the implementation of project proposals for the restoration and conservation of individual monuments, and in education.

Innovative Construction Component

This paper presents the design process for an innovative modular brick unit, which was based on the principles of bioclimatic and environmentally-friendly architecture. The design aims at creating an architecturally appealing component, which at the same time can fulfil various bioclimatic functions depending on the prevailing climatic conditions and the building requirements. The presented design proposal was a winning entry at the international architectural competition “Brick-stainable: Rethinking the Brick”, organised by Potomac Valley Brick.

The adaptive reuse design strategies– focused on the case of the Tate Modern architectural competition

ABSTRACT This paper aims to investigate the existing design strategies of adaptive reuse and compare the strategies with the significant case, Tate Modern, which was converted from a power plant into a museum through competition. It analyses the winning architect’s strategies compared to other participating architects’ and how they made the conversion successful. This paper uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to analyze the strategies by comparing the competition brief, the minutes of the assessors, the drawings of design proposals, and interviews. The research reveals that the winning architect better understood the potential of the original building and employed a strategy of amplifying it by adding the least architectural components and giving overall uniformity to the old and new elements instead of contrasting them. They made the space integrating and multi-layered, not a dry background nor a distracting space but a challenging space for new art. This result indicates that adaptive reuse has to begin with an in-depth analysis of the existing building, its potential, and stakeholder needs, unlike constructing a new one. In addition, the participating architects’ strategies went beyond the scope of the existing theories’ classification, which shows that existing theories should be supplemented with future research and revised.

Architectural Competitions: An Innovative Tool for Developing Architecture Education and Professional Practice

Architectural Competitions: An Innovative Tool for Developing Architecture Education and Professional Practice

Graditeljska delatnost projektnog ateljea "Invest-projekt" (1952-1963)

This article researched design practice and construction activity of the project studio "Invest-projekt" from Belgrade. In the ten-year activity period (1952-1963), this small project studio, with a small number of young, enthusiastic and talented architects, gave birth to high-quality, recognizable and author's architecture, and finally a well-designed and built space during the 1950s. On the basis of available knowledge, drawn from direct testimony, available sources from professional periodicals and partially preserved project documentation, the first step was taken towards evaluating his contribution to the development of Belgrade and Serbian architecture in the second half of the 20th century, and determining the exact number of designed and constructed buildings in the area of the city of Belgrade. Special attention was paid to elucidating the working methods of this studio, especially regarding to received typologically diverse investments, then logistical support to other architects, such as Branko Pešić and Miroslav Mirko Jovanović, and finally participation in architectural competitions. The built building fund, consisting of school, residential and administrative buildings, represents a valuable and precious material legacy of this studio, which was worked on by at most two women architects - Danica Dana Milosavljević and Zagorka Lula Mešulam.

Embracing Tradition: Classical Studio in 2022

The year 2022 saw the return of Classical Studio within the Unitec | Te Pūkenga School of Architecture after a ten-year hiatus. In Classical Studio, the goal isn’t necessarily to teach how to design a classical building, but to give third- and fourth-year students a deeper understanding of proportional and compositional principles, and a way to generate and evaluate with traditional design methodology. This time the studio was offered to second-year students, presenting new pedagogical opportunities. The criteria for the second-year studio are outlined, as well as how a classical approach to architectural design is aligned with these criteria. The brief was found in a 101-year-old issue of N.Z. Building Progress, in an architectural competition conceived and judged by Reginald Ford, the founding member of Gummer and Ford, perhaps New Zealand’s most influential architectural practice. In a departure from the traditional Unitec Classical Studio, the students were required to present their final designs with CAD instead of watercolour, the opportunities and challenges of which are discussed. This article explains the design process behind the studio, how the brief was interrogated and developed, and what steps the students took to learn how to design a classical building. But more importantly, what lessons were learned from following this process, and how a sampling of classical instruction can fit into a modern architectural education.

The impact of architecturally qualified data in deep learning methods for the automatic generation of social housing layouts

The objective of this work is to explore the impact of the data in the automatic generation of social housing layouts with different deep learning models. The design of Social Housing is a subfield of architecture that necessitates, from the architect, a high degree of precision in refining layouts to effectively address both the programmatic requirements and the aspiration to attain the utmost architectural quality to guarantee inhabitants comfort. This dual challenge stands to gain significantly from the incorporation of data-driven generative processes bolstered by machine learning techniques in general and deep learning ones in particular. The most widely used dataset for data-driven layout generation with deep learning methods is RPLAN, a generic floor plan dataset available online. Although it contains a significant amount of plans, it lacks any information about the architectural quality criteria used for the selection of the data. We conducted an initial analysis of the architectural consistency and key quality features of RPLAN. Upon finding several issues that raise doubts about its suitability for training social housing generation models, we proceeded to create PUBLICPLAN, a new dataset based on proposals submitted and evaluated in public architecture competitions in Spain over the past three years. It comprises 2446 distinct layouts extracted from 1279 proposals in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. All of these layouts demonstrate high architectural standards. Then, we retrained the three most advanced existing models for generating interior plans using PUBLICPLAN and compared their performance to the same models trained with different subsets of RPLAN. Once the models were trained, we conducted several experiments comparing different models and data subsets and evaluating the impact of the quantity and quality of the data on the models' performance. Those experiments involved over two hundred architects and architecture students. We also examined the plausibility of the generated plans being synthetic with a survey asking to distinguish between human and machine generated layout plans. Our results showed that PUBLICPLAN had a significant impact compared to the alternatives with a similar number of cases. In the examination of the feasibility of human-generated plans, over 48.43% of architects and architecture students identified machine-generated plans as being of human origin. Moreover, in qualitative experiments conducted with an equivalent dataset, our qualified dataset PUBLICPLAN demonstrated a significantly superior human rating (72.13%) when evaluated by human assessors, as compared to models trained with RPLAN. This highlights the importance of using qualified datasets in deep learning for the generation of social housing layouts. We also identified challenges and priorities in the research field, both in the deep learning process and architectural design practices.

House of State Institutions in Irkutsk (House of Soviets)

The article considers one of the most striking objects of the Soviet period, the House of Soviets, at different stages of its realisation – from its design to final result. On the example of the Irkutsk House of Soviets the peculiarities of the approach to buildings of this type are revealed: architectural competitions, complex environmental approach, stylistic features associated with ideological attitudes, construction problems.

Twenty years of clients for religious architectures

The contribution proposes a reflection on the relationship between the client, the architect and the various actors involved in the planning, design and construction of new churches, focusing on the Italian context in the last twenty years, and asking who can be considered the actual client for religious buildings. The selected time frame underlines a season characterised by different experimentation approaches for architectural competitions promoted, facilitated or supported by the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), starting from the experience of the Pilot Projects, passing through the Diocesan Paths, up to the most recent Participatory Processes, aimed at reducing the gap between Church client, user’s requests, and architectural projects. Such processes involve a large panel of actors, including the National and Diocesan bodies, local interlocutors, and the design teams, made up of various professionals. The study aims to investigate such recent procedures, to provide an analytical look at the maturing of the processes and to the identification of the collective client.

Environmental Assessments in Architectural Competitions in Poland in the Years 2018–2022

This paper discusses environmental and energy-saving factors in architectural competition procedures. The final assessment of sustainability and environmental aspects of a building is a derivative of the decisions taken during the entire project execution process, especially those taken at the initial stage. Notifications concerning architectural competitions, both in Poland and other European countries, as well as in the United States and Canada, increasingly often list sustainability as a necessary criterion. Aspects such as the use of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency solutions or reducing a building’s occupancy costs most often appear as guidelines. In this paper, the authors discuss the essence of solutions in architectural competition procedures announced in Poland in the years 2018–2022, using 154 cases as an example and setting them against the background of Europe. The types and level of detail of the selected criteria and their frequency of occurrence were examined. The study unveiled the absence of comprehensive guidelines in the processes of nationwide architectural competitions that take sustainability into account. The lack of definitions for environmental and energy objectives has a significant impact on their integration into competition designs, and reduces the chances of adapting and adopting these aspects at a further stage. Based on the analysis, a range of recommendations were formulated for implementation in competition procedures.

Town Hall in Koerich: Building for People, Not for Architects

When in 2014 a shoebox-like project was announced as the winner of an architectural competition to extend the eighteenth-century vernacular town hall in the village of Koerich, there was a public uproar. Concerned citizens formed a pressure group called Quo Vadis to oppose the project, and opposition politicians promised to abandon it if they won the upcoming elections. It was then that one of the municipal technicians suggested they ask an Irish immigrant architect, the only one seemingly producing Luxembourger buildings in Luxembourg, to make a proposal.

МОЖЛИВОСТІ РЕВІТАЛІЗАЦІЇ ПРОМИСЛОВИХ ТЕРИТОРІЙ МІСТ НА ПРИКЛАДІ ВУЛИЦІ ЗАМКОВОЇ У МІСТІ ЛЬВІВ

Globally, cities have two options for growth: extensive and intensive. The former involves expanding the city's area to accommodate increased development or population. However, this option has significant drawbacks, including longer travel times within the city, loss of arable or recreational land around the city, and the need to construct new infrastructure. As a result, many cities opt for the intensive approach, which maximizes land use efficiency. The topic of revitalization has been under investigation since the mid-20th century, but it is relatively new for Ukraine. As a result, there is a lack of scientific articles that thoroughly explore the subject from all angles. From Ukrainian authors, I want to highlight Hnatiuk L., Melnyk M., Sych O., Levchenko O., Birkentale V. The aim of this article is to examine the global practices of breathing new life into industrial areas. Additionally, it will delve into the history and present state of an industrial area located on Zamkova Street in Lviv. The article seeks to identify the development prospects of the region and provide recommendations and principles for the revitalization of Zamkova Street. We have discovered a few examples of international projects that showcase the importance of experience: KingKros in London, UK, HafenCity in Hamburg, Germany, and Two Kings in Toronto, Canada. As part of our research, we have identified some challenges facing the industrial area on Zamkova Street. Based on our analysis of these challenges and similar projects, we have created a list of principles for revitalization. These include mixed-use buildings, height restrictions, infrastructure development, the idea of a "five-minute city" or "city of short distances," a broad range of housing prices, ample public spaces, new points of attraction, job opportunities close to homes, architecture competitions, preservation of historical buildings, emphasis on pedestrian safety, and the concept of a "sponge city." The issue of industrial areas in Ukrainian cities is complex, but not unique. Many cities have gone through this developmental phase. Fortunately, our cities have an opportunity to draw from successful revitalization experiences. By tailoring these practices to fit each unique situation, we can transform our communities for the better.

Proposals on open design competition to revitalize collage building in Javor street

Abstract University of Obuda Ybl Miklós Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering launched an architectural competition to seek for forward-looking solutions for rehabilitation and revitalization of an unused and eroding building. The estate in question is located near the Faculty campus, under 9. Javor Street, 1145, Budapest. When the possibility of a renovation arose, leaders of the Faculty decided to involve the community of the students in order to represent their points of view. The open, secret competition had been launched on 8th September, and by the deadline 30th November fifteen proposals were submitted. Two of the most promising designs were awarded 1st prizes, one got a 2nd prize and two further submissions earned 3rd prize..

Does the High-Rise Building Typology meet the needs for City Densification? The case of Tirana, Albania

The first high-rise building ever in Tirana and Albania was built during the 70-s. This was Hotel Tirana or “15-kateshi” as it was nicknamed. At that time, Tirana was building not more than six floors high due to limitations in finances, technology, as well as seismic regulations. Hotel Tirana was an exception for ideological and symbolic reasons of the regime. After the ‘change’ of the early 90-s and the return of the market economy, several private construction companies came up by developing ‘tower’ typology buildings of 7-9 floors. In the second decade of transformations, the municipality developed several international architectural competitions, including a masterplan for the city centre (2003) and other specific construction sites, mainly for strategic high-rise building purposes. During these years, Tirana was densified by tripling its population thanks to a typology of towers of 9-11 floors. There has been a lot of criticism of the respective municipal decision-making procedures, allegedly related to the politicization and corruption of the verticalization and densification process via control of the building permissions system

Competitive works of A.V. Shchusev (1873-1949) and his participation in the international exhibitions

On September 26, 2023, we will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding architect of the first half of the XX century A. V. Shchusev (1873-1949). Alekseу Viktorovich was born in 1873 in Chisinau on Leovskaya Street (today Shchusev Street, where the museum of this architect is located). During his 76 years of life, he managed to fully realize his talent in architecture, becoming the author of the masterpiece in the construction of the mausoleum on the Red Square in Moscow. He became a laureate of four Stalin Prizes, and educated more than one generation of talented architects. He also founded the State Museum of Russian Architecture. Researching the many-sided architectural creativity of Academician Shchusev, in the article the author presents only the most important works of this great master which entered in competition. After graduating in 1897 with a gold medal from the Higher Petersburg Art School, A. V. Shchusev was awarded the title of artist-architect with the rank of the 10th class having the right to engage in designing buildings independently. Thus, he took part in architectural competitions for the construction of a new St. Petersburg hospital (19011902), a branch of the state bank in Nizhniy Novgorod (1910-1911), Kazanskiy railway station in Moscow (1913), the Russian pavilion for the XI International art exhibition in Venice (1913 -1914), the shelter for the children of fallen soldiers near the city of Chisinau (1916), etc.