TIMBER IN THE CITY 4: Urban Habitats Competition , Atlanta / Vereinigte Staaten

 

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA)

 

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) is pleased to announce TIMBER IN THE CITY 4: Urban Habitats Competition for the 2021-2022 academic year. The competition is a partnership between the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB), ACSA and the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The program is intended to engage students, working individually or in teams, to imagine the transformation of our existing cities through sustainable buildings from renewable resources, offering expedient affordable construction, innovating with new and traditional wooden materials, and designing healthy living and working environments. This is the fourth competition in this TIMBER IN THE CITY series, and focuses this year on the interrelationship between housing, urban transit infrastructure, equitable living, and climate change.

 

Embracing new structural and ecological possibilities of wood construction, entrants will design a mid-rise, mixed-use complex that includes affordable housing, a large community wellness facility, and an early childhood education center, all interlaced with a new exterior public waterfront space. Entrants are challenged to propose construction systems in scenarios that draw optimally on the performance characteristics of not one but a variety of wood technologies and are encouraged to think about the site as a testing ground for socially, materially, and environmentally progressive and innovative models of sustainable urban living.

 

The programs for this mixed-use development are composed to challenge students and educators to think creatively and critically about the way in which choices about building materials, and the interrelationship of interior space and the exterior environments frame long- term consequences for the health of urban environments. Housing is the largest component of the competition program and presents an opportunity to look closely at the way timber construction can be used effectively in creating buildings based on smaller cellular units. A community wellness and sports facility complements the housing, and offers larger community and collective spaces that will require larger structural spans. An early childhood education center, for children from 6 weeks to 5 years old, calls attention to the critical role these institutions play in the long-term vitality and development of a community.

 

This fourth edition of the Timber in the City considers a site, the midtown Atlanta Arts Center, located in Atlanta’s Heart of the Arts, known for its dense number of art galleries, museums, theaters, historic buildings, and the proximity to Georgia Tech, the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design (the first Living Building Challenge-certified structure in the South), the Innovation and Technology district as well as Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta campus. When the metro system was built in the 1970’s, to make the stations highly visible and accessible, they were constructed as single use structures, on what is now very valuable real estate. Single-use structures in Midtown Atlanta are now longer economically or socially relevant.

 

Because the support of SLB is largely derived from companies whose markets are mainly in the U.S., the Timber in the City Student Competition is open to students and/or student teams from ACSA Full and Candidate Member Schools, as well as ACSA Affiliate Members Schools from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

 

Registration Deadline: April 13, 2022

Submission Deadline: June 1, 2022

Jury Convenes: Summer 2022

Winners Announced: Summer 2022

 

Winning students and their faculty sponsors will receive cash prizes totaling $40,000 USD. The design jury will meet in the summer of 2022 to select winning projects and honorable mentions. Winners and their faculty sponsors will be notified of the competition results directly. A list of winning projects will be posted on the ACSA website (www.acsa-arch.org).

 

First Prize: Student $10,000 / Faculty Sponsor $7,000

Second Prize: Student $8,000 / Faculty Sponsor $5,000

Third Prize: Student $6,000 / Faculty Sponsor $4,000