Sponsor: AECOM
Type: Open, International, Student ideas competition
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Language: English
Fee: None
Eligibility: Open to undergraduate and graduate students of architecture, planning, landscape architecture, economics, environmental science, engineering and related disciplines, at all levels of higher education in all countries of the world. Entrants must be enrolled in a certified degree program during the Autumn 2010 term. Submissions may be from individuals or teams of up to 4 members.

Timetable:
1 May 2010 - Call for submissions
31 July 2010 - Submission Deadline
1 September 2010 - Announcement of 5 Semi-Finalists
3-5 November 2010 - Presentation + Critique of Semi-Finalists' Submissions at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, Spain
5 November 2010 - Announcement of Winner(s)

Awards:
First Prize - $20,000
The top four entrants will get to travel to Barcelona to attend the World Architecture Festival in November 2010.

Design Challenge:
AECOM is seeking submissions for the second Urban SOS competition. The theme of this year’s competition is Transformations. AECOM is seeking integrated design and planning responses in five specific cities worldwide, which are currently undergoing an elemental transformation. In each city, a specific event or set of conditions offers both opportunities and challenges to improving the quality and tenor of built environments, the effectiveness of infrastructure and the responsible stewardship of ecological interactions.

City-specific briefs are outlined in the ‘Where’ section. Entrants must select one city and offer a competition entry that responds directly to the question posed in it.

As the cities are transforming themselves, Entrants must articulate and propose a design and/or planning initiative or response that will help the city to positively address transformation. Responses can range from a strategic framework to a surgical micro-response. Entrants should demonstrate a holistic approach to expressing these transformations. Designs should show a connective language that can embrace many or all aspects of the site. They should express a language of built form that ties together land, community, buildings, ecology, infrastructure, economic and social activity to strategically transform your site.

The jury is looking for professional responses to challenging questions. Judges will value creativity and innovation, but the responses must be fundamentally deliverable.

The most successful responses will be those that are well-presented, combining the points of view of more than one discipline — architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, economics, planning, ecological science, etc — and are realistically able to be implemented given pre-existing, city-specific antecedents, conditions, socio-economic and politico-cultural realities.

For more information, go to: www.aecom.com/urbansos

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