BUILDABLE VISIONS: SUSTAINABILITY INNOVATIONS IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENTS OF CAMPUSES AND THEIR COMMUNITIES

Last Updated: March 8, 2010

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BUILDABLE VISIONS: SUSTAINABILITY INNOVATIONS IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENTS OF CAMPUSES AND THEIR COMMUNITIES
An Energy Architecture Competition for Students
in association with the Ninth Annual California Higher Education Sustainability Conference,
Los Angeles Trade Tech, June 20-23, 2010

For more info, please CLICK HERE.

"Architects often make magnanimous pronouncements of how important their creations are to a new social vision, but rarely do they step back to realize that the built environment does not change everything. In fact, most of the world's best architecture is not designed by any single designer or planner; instead it represents a community solution to a variety of problems that are often better understood by diverse parts of the social fabric." -- William McDonough and Michael Braungart, The Hannover Principles, Design for Sustainability, 2003.

The Ninth Annual California Higher Education Sustainability Conference: Golden State Green Opportunities, hosted by Los Angeles Trade Tech and the Los Angeles Community College District at Trade Tech June 20th-23rd, will share best practices designed for California campuses, introduce student leaders creating change for sustainability, present green business leaders and their products - and will showcase several specific design concepts in specified project categories toward sustainable environments: the Buildable Visions Design Competition seeks to accelerate this campus-to-community-to-society innovation transfer.

• First Prize: $500 plus 3D representation of the 2D submission
• Second Prize: $250 plus honorable mention of the team
• Third Prize: $175 plus honorable mention of the team

All undergraduate and graduate students from the University of California, the California State Universities, and the California Community Colleges are invited to form design teams of three or more individuals, representing three or more disciplines, that will create design concepts and associated program proposals that can be used to accomplish projects in one of the following seven categories -- or in hybrid projects covering two or more categories -- on their campus and/or in the cities and communities surrounding their campuses, in the year 2010 or 2011.

College and university campuses are important parts of the larger communities, towns, and cities in which they are located, both physically and intellectually. There is an enormous largely untapped potential for accelerated environmental sustainability in our institutions of higher education and their students, faculty, and physical structures and built environments. Structures and infrastructure, procedures, practices, and programs for sustainability can be created and developed and then flow outward from our college and university campuses into their urban, suburban, and exurban surroundings and our national and global society.

The design may be for any type or size of building, multi-building area, community, water body, etc., but the project boundary must be identifiable. The work must clearly demonstrate excellence in moving our campuses and communities toward sustainability, and must respond to one or more of the following criteria:

'Sun Walls' to create 'District Shading' in large multi-building areas and generate solar electricity: Practical and buildable designs of large-scale solar-photovoltaic walls that provide summer shade and reduce the cooling loads of large multi-building areas such as college and school campuses, business parks, shopping malls, and neighborhoods;

South Face Sustainability Makeovers of large existing buildings, using sustainable building materials and techniques: Practical and buildable re-designs of the solar-exposed south faces - or entire skins - of specific architecturally undistinguished large buildings from the last century, on campus and off, that maximize the potential for both active solar-electric and solar-thermal energy production and passive solar heating and cooling load reduction with architectural beauty and excitement;

'Green Strips' along thoroughfares: 'Vegetecture' makeovers of existing commercial and public buildings fronting both sides of block-long or multi-block-long stretches of boulevard in specially designated self-selected linear 'green districts' to dramatically improve their beauty, enjoyability, sustainability, and commercial success as local and city-wide destinations.

Exterior Lighting Makeovers of campuses and surrounding cities/communities, integrating low- and zero-carbon energy technologies: Exterior lighting designs and re-designs of campus and surrounding city and town areas that reduce the use of carbon-based electricity and environmental light pollution while enhancing built-environment ambience and preserving public safety;

Campuses as Hubs of Local Public Transportation use, improvement, and promotion that create solutions to California's urban sprawl: Affordable physical and service improvements to local public transportation systems - vehicles, stations, bus stops - that materially increase student and general-public use of local public transportation and its lower-per capita carbon attributes, as well as innovative programs of public transportation promotion and public information;

Re-Greening and 'Re-Blueing' the Los Angeles River and other urban waterways with water-conserving flood control solutions: Designs for the rehabilitation and partial repurposing of the Los Angeles River and its surrounding environment to reform storm water collection practices and vastly improve water retention, groundwater recharging, water purification, and overall water management, along with habitat restoration, public recreation and enjoyment of nature, and possibly renewable energy generation.

Carbon Ponds to grow algae for carbon sequestration and sustainable energy: Designs for 'carbon ponds' and 'solar furnaces' that grow and convert algae into charcoal as a versatile industrial material that also acts as a carbon sink.

Competition Rules:
The competition is open to current college and university undergraduate and graduate students in the public California Higher Education System. Team members must be enrolled in a college or university at the time of the competition but do not need to be enrolled full-time.

Teams are encouraged to include members from only one school. If collaboration between schools is desired, team leaders and a designated faculty advisor must request prior approval by submitting the team registration form with a cover e-mail to ____________.

Multiple teams from a single school are welcome, but each team must work independently to keep the competition fair to other teams.

A team of about four is recommended although fewer or more members are allowed.

Given the multi-disciplinary nature of this competition, teams are encouraged to include members with varying expertise including but not limited to architecture/planning, industrial design, engineering (all types), economics, business, environmental science, public policy, chemistry, marketing, education, fashion, or any other field of study relevant to the team's design.

Each team must have a faculty advisor. The faculty advisor must be a faculty member of a California public college or university with at least two to three students on the team. Adjunct and emeritus faculty are welcome to serve in this capacity. Faculty advisors may give guidance and suggestions but cannot perform actual design work. Faculty advisors can advise more than one team, but they must assist in making sure the teams work independently to keep competition fair to other schools with single teams.

Submissions shall be in the form of a single A1 landscape poster along with a CD containing 20 PowerPoint slides describing important technicalities and the poster file. The Project Title, Students' Names, Team's Name, and School(s) must be clearly indicated on the top left hand corner. The content and layout of the board is left to the entrant to decide. Computer-graphic capabilities and digital-fabrication technologies play an ever-growing role in design and manufacturing, and will be the core part of submissions to the California Higher Education Buildable Visions Design Competition - ideas made specific and real in two dimensions that have the best chance, in the jurors' judgment, of becoming real in three dimensions.

Student Teams whose work is accepted for the competition must register for the Ninth Annual California Higher Education Sustainability Conference: Golden State Green Opportunities, June 20th-23rd, hosted by Los Angeles Trade Tech at the discounted student rate. The organizers retain the right to reject any entry that in their opinion fails to address the theme of the competition.

The Buildable Visions Energy Architecture Competition will make every effort to nurture, network, support and help develop the best concepts brought forward by the entrants. It's our intent that the visions, ideas and designs judged the best in the competition, the winning ideas and runners-up -- and potentially all the ideas catalyzed by the Buildable Visions endeavor -- be further defined, designed and developed, leading to prototype structures, devices, processes and policies that ultimately get built, manufactured and applied in the real "4D" world to help move our state, country and world to the low-carbon, sustainable future that humanity everywhere must create.

The Buildable Visions competition will attempt to follow this initial Concept ('Visions') Phase (ending with the presentation of awards and of all entries at the Ninth Annual California Higher Education Sustainability Conference on June 23, 2010) with a second Design (make it 'Buildable') Phase and then a third Implementation ('Build' it) Phase potentially extending into 2011 and 2012.

The Buildable Visions Energy Architecture Competition will occur in three phases: the Initial Concept ('Visions') Phase, ending with the presentation of awards and of all entries at the Ninth Annual California Higher Education Sustainability Conference on June 23rd, 2010; the Second Design (make it 'Buildable') Phase, ending December 31st, 2010; and the Third Implementation ('Build') Phase, ending December 31st, 2011. All good ideas, plans, and designs from the Buildable Visions Energy Architecture Competition - including those in non-winning entries - will be retained and will form part of the reference document and "knowledge base" the Competition generates. "Hybrid" winners sharing the First, Second, or Third Prize in a category or hybrid category are possible. The Competition organizers seek to create the largest, most comprehensive, and useful overall result from this shared enterprise.

Humanity's window of opportunity to achieve the massive improvements in energy efficiency and energy use reduction, renewable energy, and decarbonization needed for ecological stabilization, environmental sustainability, and a decent human future on planet Earth is rapidly closing. The current generation must embrace and quickly advance the generation of renewable energy and the far-reaching re-generation of our built environment. The Buildable Visions Energy Architecture Competition seeks to generate innovations, designs, and ideas that can be turned into real structures, processes, and outcomes early in the decade just begun - and further build, envision, and build from there!

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