Google and Guggenheim: Design It Shelter Competition

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Google SketchUp invite amateur and professional designers to participate in a global, online initiative that asks the public to use Google Earth and Google SketchUp to create and submit designs for virtual 3-D shelters.

The competition takes its inspiration from “Learning By Doing,” an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum’s Sackler Center for Arts Education, which features plans, photographs, and models of shelters built by students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. For the past seven decades, students at the school have taken on the challenge of designing, building, and living in small shelters nestled in the landscape of the school’s Arizona Taliesin West campus and recently on the Taliesin campus in Wisconsin as well. Inspired by the program, the Design It: Shelter Competition opens Wright’s challenge to the world by asking participants to design an ideal shelter in a location of their choice and in response to that location.

Following the competition submission period, June 8 through August 23, 2009, Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture students will select ten entries as finalists. The public will be invited to vote on the finalists online from September 7 through October 10 to determine the winner of the People’s Prize.  At the same time, a jury of experts in the fields of architecture and design will review all shelter submissions to choose the winner of the Juried Prize. Jury members include Martin Cox, Principal, Bade Stageberg Cox; Neil M. Denari, Principal, Neil M. Denari Architects; Cathleen McGuigan, Architecture Critic, Newsweek; Victor Sidy, Dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture; Lisa Strausfeld, Partner, Pentagram; Aidan Chopra, Product Evangelist, Google SketchUp; and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design at the Guggenheim.

The two competition winners will be announced on October 21, 2009. Prizes will include airfare and two nights’ accommodation for two in New York City, behind-the-scenes tours of the Guggenheim Museum and Google offices, and Google SketchUp Pro licenses. The Juried Prize will also include a $1,000 cash award.

For further details on the competition or to view submissions, visit: www.guggenheim.org/shelter

COMPETITION SCHEDULE
Submission Period: June 8 - August 23, 2009
Ten People’s Prize Finalists Selected: September 7, 2009
People’s Prize Public Voting Period: September 7 - October 10, 2009
People’s Prize and Juried Prize Winners Announced: October 21, 2009