2015 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers: Authenticity

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

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

Jury
Keller Easterling
Sanford Kwinter
Michael Meredith
Billie Tsien

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

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, visual
 ization, 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. Co
 llaborative 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.

For more information, visit: http://archleague.org/2015/02/2015-architectural-league-prize-for-young-architects-designers-authenticity/