Architects and Students Urban Adaptation Competition

Architects and Students Urban Adaptation Competition

THE URBAN ADAPTATION COMPETITION challenges architects and students from around the world to find a way to create multi-use buildings which can adapt to the changing needs of the urban community. Entrants are asked to select a centrally-located empty plot in a city area and develop an innovative modular wood design for a public building that easily adapts to the changing needs of the community.Too often buildings are static and focus only on the current needs of the community. They serve the purpose they are designed to serve, but when cities grow and the needs of the community change, this becomes a problem. There might also be a need to quickly adapt to the changes of lifestyle, like moving to work from home office.For example, a community might need less office space and a kindergarten instead because of a change in the demography. Or vice versa.
We need buildings that can be adapted to new needs during the building’s life cycle.We need urban adaptation.

Criteria
The design should be a multi-purpose building or a building system for an urban environment. The designs are required to have public services, but can also have other functions.

The competition entry should show different scenarios and how the building or the building system can be adapted and re-configured based on the changing needs during the life cycle, for example in 3, 20, 50 years after the building has been taken into use.

In addition to visual and functional criteria, the designs need to show
(1.) adaptability;
(2.) modularity; and
(3.) sustainability.

Criteria for judging
Criteria for the judging of submissions will include:

– Creative use of engineered wood, for example, Metsä Wood’s Kerto LVL columns, beams and panels as the primary structural material.
-Creative and innovative use of wood in the design solution.
-Integration of the structure and concept into surrounding urban context.
-Innovation in the use of the structures, modules and components that are adaptable according to the changing needs and uses of the inhabitants and the community.
-Demonstration of the overall environmental benefits: use of sustainable wooden materials, the design’s carbon footprint and the long life-cycle.
-The efficient use of material is a central criteria for sustainability. Although the created carbon storage is an important sustainability target, it should not be created at the expense of material efficiency.

JURY

-Andrew Scott
Andrew Scott is a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design in the Department of Architecture at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was head of Architecture from 2018-20. He is a UK registered architect with extensive professional and academic experience in the UK and the US. His professional, design and research interests revolve around explorations of ecological issues and the criticality of climate change to various scales of architecture, cities and urban systems. Scott’s recent projects, studio teaching and publications have focused upon low-carbon communities, health and design at multiple scales, and new models for affordable urban housing (including the deployment of mass timber technologies). His most recent book is ‘Renewtown’: Adaptive Urbanism and the Low Carbon Community (Routledge).

-Rahel Belatchew
Rahel Belatchew, architect MSA/SAR, DESA is the founder of Belatchew Arkitekter. Trained at the Ecole Speciale in Paris, and active as an architect in France, Japan and Luxemburg. Belatchew is based in Stockholm where the office was established in 2006.
Rahel Belatchew has been appointed Architect of the Year and Belatchew Arkitekter and Belatchew Labs have received several awards, including the Architecture Masterprize, World Architecture News Awards, Architectural Review MIPIM Future Project Award, Smart Living Challenge and the Swedish national design award Design S. The works of Belatchew has been displayed at several museums and Rahel has represented Sweden at architectural events around the world, such as London, Reykjavik and Mumbai. Rahel has also participated in juries of many prestigious awards in Sweden and internationally. In 2019, the book “Attitude as Style” about Rahel Belatchew and the work of Belatchew Arkitekter was published.

-Minna Riska
Minna Riska, Architect, M.Sc SAFA, is a founding partner at MDH Arkitekter. She has studied in Finland, Denmark and Norway, where she has been working after graduation from the University of Oulu in 2003. MDH architects work with all scales and types of projects of the built environment from urban planning, public transport projects to public buildings and private villas.
Starting with the transformation of the Moholt student village in 2013 the office has gained a lot of experience with projects built in CLT in a very short time. The “Moholt project” has received many national and international architecture and urban planning awards and MDH is frequently invited to share their experiences in building with CLT through lectures both nationally and internationally. Minna has been teaching at the Oslo school of architecture and design and is often invited as an external sensor both at the Oslo school of architecture and NTNU in Trondheim.