THINK SPACE- Ecological Borders / “YUmen[eco]tec-pharm

The Zagreb Society of Architects is launching the third of four architectural competitions for this year’s Think Space cycle. For this year’s annual cycle, the main theme connecting all four competitions is Borders.

The new - third Ecological Borders competition calls for a radical reimagination of the current relationship between humans and the built environment through the establishment of new architectural protocols of coexistence in the search of a new Partial-Total Ecology: “YUmen[eco]tec-pharming”.

The juror of the competition is François Roche, who together with Stéphanie Lavaux runs R&Sie;(n) architectural practice based in Paris. His architectural work builds on research as speculation - integrating nature as a protocol. It seeks to articulate the real and/or fictional, the geographic situations and narrative structures that can transform them, focusing on development of technological experiments as forms of natural distortion or environmental mutations.

In the past architecture has always operated as a mediator between humans and the built environment, within an anthropocentric ideological framework with a deterministic approach. This competition seeks to escape this direct relationship and asks for submissions able to produce new socio-ecological scenarios able to reimagine our current ideas and preconceptions, in relation to notions of equilibrium and sustainability within Western Culture.

Going beyond notions of moral ecology or fake sustainability, this competition asks for entries able to envision new architectural scenarios and moments of invention by looking into spaces of residual otherness to reconstitute canonical forms of thinking.
These new socioecological architectural visions will provide a new understanding and a new set of possible relations of humans with the planet.
François Roche


Submission deadline for Ecopolitical Borders is
28 June 2011 (Tue), 12:00, CET - Central European Time.

There is an early participation fee of 220 HRK / 30 EUR untill 14 June 2011.
From 15 June to 28 June 2011 participation fee will be 330 HRK / 45 EUR.

Prizes

1. prize: 1000 EUR
2. prize: 700 EUR
3. prize: 350 EUR

All winners will be granted with ORIS pack:

· Annual subscription to ORIS Magazine - for Culture and Architecture
· Free Admission to Days of ORIS
International Architectural Symposium
Last weekend of October 2011 in Zagreb

Please visit our web site think-space.org for further information. Recently updated Participant’s Kit includes all the necessary information about this particular contest. All the entries from the previous competition Geopolitical Borders have been published in our gallery. Please take a look at award winning works, and read the juror's comments!

Feel invited to explore the borders of architectural thought and join at www.think-space.org/competitions. You can also follow us on Facebook.
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The winners of the second competition in this year’s annual cycle devised by Teddy Cruz are Konstantinos Papadimitrakopoulos (Greece) with his project “Border Archipelagos of the Narrow Passages” and Despoina Gkirti together with Efthymios Dimopoulos with their project “Common Visions: The Case of Prespa Region”. Take a look at award winning works, and read the juror's comments in our gallery http://www.think-space.org/gallery/ .

Best regards,

Kata Marunica
Think Space Programme Team
Drustvo arhitekata Zagreba (DAZ)
Zagreb Society of Architects
Trg bana Jelacica 3/I
HR - 10 000 Zagreb
Croatia
tel. +38514816151; fax. +38514816197
e-mail: [email protected]