All architecture is about the future – but about the past too.

BRIEF

What are desirable ‘architecture futures’? Which futures would you want to invent? What will be the shifts, the new paradigms? What will the architecture of the future care for, what should it try to do, what will it desire for? One way to answer such questions is to ask those who will build that future— the next generation, our next generation— the alumni of the first 10 years of architectural education at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

Architecture, essentially a forward looking act— through the ages, architects have continuously investigated and speculated about the future. Architects drawings and images present us with new notions of future environments that may rethink the home, the office, the city, the countryside, public space and private space, our societies, our cultures, our methods of design, and even the meaning of our discipline. Architecture can argue for desirable futures.

This competition is simple in its format, but challenging in its question— it asks you to articulate an ‘Architecture Future’. There is no site, you may use any location or context and indeed there may be no defined site— it may be a past, present, or new project— it may be more than one project. You may present your architecture as a practical and detailed construction, as a conceptual idea, as an architectural vision, narrative, polemic, or speculation.

We are looking for design that challenges and inspires. Your architecture may be a vision for sustainability; it may look to solve problems economic, social, or cultural; it may be technological, political, or environmental; it may establish new methods or forms of architecture; it may present new spaces or platforms for living, working, or play; it may redefine and transform our understanding of what architecture even is; it may situate itself within a new future, or may argue for a return to what architecture once was. Your architecture will be judged upon the terms in which you frame it— understood through the eyes of the judging panel, as ‘a future’, in the way in which you communicate it to be.

Submissions should be clearly definable as architecture, and be able to be understood and read as architecture. It is expected that submissions include drawings and visualisation, that human scale is perceptible, and that any relevant context is communicated. A short explanatory text will accompany your submission.

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You are to submit 5 square sheets, each 400x400mm. The first 4 sheets can be architectural graphic representation of any kind. The fifth sheet is text— your unique registration number allocated upon successful registration and under 200 words in English, where you may explain your submission by referring to your sheets. All 5 sheets are to be submitted online as a combined PDF of under 20MB. The 4 sheets of architectural graphic representation are not to contain any text.

Submission sheets may have a single drawing or image, or alternatively may be conceived as a poster or collage combining drawings and images. Participants are reminded of the size of the sheets, and therefore the legibility of each sheet at this scale, in judging and at exhibition.

Your 4 architectural graphic representation sheets will be reviewed by the jury alongside your respective text summaries. Upon exhibition of the winning submissions, your text summary will appear directly alongside your architectural graphic representation sheets, with the text reformatted by the exhibition team.

Submissions are to be uploaded before the deadline, via the competition upload panel, and following the instructions provided on completion of the registration process. Submissions are anonymous, and participants are to name their PDF using a unique identification number following the instruction provided by the competition website. Late submissions will be disqualified, and submissions that reveal any information related to any individuals identity will be disqualified.

Submissions must be fully your own work. Submissions may be new work, or edited work produced during study, or after, or may be a re-use or re-working of past ideas. Submissions may not be work already submitted for another competition, or already published. Submissions must not be published on social media in the lead up to the competition. They can only be published once the competition has been judged and winners announced.

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This competition is open exclusively to alumni and current students of the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Department of Architecture, to anyone who has studied for any time on either the undergraduate RIBA Part 1 or postgraduate RIBA Part 2 programme, including students who transferred to the University of Liverpool for part of their study, or students of the University of Liverpool who transferred to XJTLU for part of their study.

Submissions will be accepted from any such individual, but not from groups. The submission must be entirely your own work, and not a collaboration of any kind. You are permitted to make a single submission only. Ineligible submissions will be disqualified.