Floating City Project – Architectural Design Contest

The Floating City Project – Architectural Design Contest is organized by The Seasteading Institute (USA) in partnership with DeltaSync (Netherlands).

Page Contents

Assignment

Prizes

Registration

Submissions

Schedule

Jury Panel

Evaluation Criteria

Contest Terms

Images from Floating City Project report

Questions and Answers

FAQs

Jury Bios

Contest Background

In Closing

 

 

Assignment

Architects, students, engineers, and designers are invited to participate in the contest and develop ideas for a floating city stationed in protected ocean waters, such as in a bay.

 

The competition is open to individuals and teams.

 

All contestants must review The Seasteading Institute/DeltaSync Floating City Project Design and Implementation Concept report, to understand the foundation and constraints of the project.

 

We invite participants to create designs for a small city with at least 10 platforms which contain housing, hotel/resort, and office/commercial spaces with the following criteria:

Designs can be created for 50 meter sided square, pentagon, and/or hexagon platforms (see DeltaSync concept for foundational information; the report does not contain hexagons, but we are allowing them for this contest).

Buildings should be no more than 3 stories tall. Structures can take up to 80% of the platform, leaving at least the other 20% for

walkways, gardens, and outdoor space Designs should account for repositioning, such that the east-west/north-south positioning

is not static. Designs should account for repositioning, such that it wouldn’t matter what modules are

directly attached as a neighbor. This will allow for fluidity in rearranging a sea-city. Designs should take into account sustainable energy practices, such as solar, wind, wave,

and tidal power, and natural heating, cooling, and ventilation. The platforms are not intended to be connected to land for electricity, water etc.

Designs should consider wave action, and withstanding severe ocean storms. The entries must include at least one 3D perspective of the whole the city (render or

sketch), at least one sample floor plan, and at least one overall section (a vertical cross section that includes the platform). We encourage multiple 3D perspectives and any relevant floor plans and sections to articulate your concept.

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Prizes

1st Place – $1500

2nd Place – $1000

3rd Place – $500

People’s Choice – $500

 

Winners and special mentions will be published on The Seasteading Institute’s website, and will likely be featured in the forthcoming Seasteading Book to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2016.

 

One contestant will be offered an internship at DeltaSync in the Netherlands.

 

Winners can expect their designs to be reprinted/posted in all kinds of media. Winners of The Seasteading Institute’s 2009 design contest have been featured in hundreds of media outlets including:

The Economist, Discovery Magazine, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Factor, Next City, Monocle, e27, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Pursuits, The Guardian, Suddeutsche Zeitung, The Independent, Business Insider, BBC.com, Sensa Nostra, h+, New Scientist, Times Online, Marine Insight, Forbes, i09, The Economic Times, The Maritime Exectuvie, Mother Jones, The Huffington Post, SF Weekly, Inc. Magazine, Tech Week Europe, Fox Business, SF Gate, Reason, Yahoo! News, CNN, Wired Magazine, The Wonderful World of Stu, The Stossel Show, NBC LA News, ABC News San Francisco, CBS Sunday Morning, Russia Today, The Verge, DIS Magazine, Tree Hugger, National Public Radio’s website, Mashable, Cryptocoin News, and Inhabitat.

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Registration

All participants should register to enter the competition by completing this form no later than May 28, 2015. We will send you a registration number after we receive your registration; this will be used for blind judging by the jurors.

 

An entry fee of $50 is required for each entry. Contestants are welcome to submit more than one entry. If you can’t afford the entry fee, please send an email to contest@seasteading.org and request a fee waiver.

 

Submission requirements

Submissions are due no later than June 1, 2015 at 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time. Entries should be submitted digitally, in a zip folder. A $50 entry fee is required with each entry; fees are payable by credit card, Bitcoin,

PayPal, and check. If you can’t afford the entry fee, please send an email to contest@seasteading.org and request a fee waiver.

Multiple entries from a person or team are accepted. Each entry requires a unique registration number and entry fee. If you plan to enter multiple times, please register multiple times.

Designers should prepare a series of slides which will be reviewed by the judges on computer screen.

Each slide should be a 1280×720 jpeg image (compression set to high). All supporting text should be on the first slide. Additional slides should be a series of images or diagrams explaining the design. One slide should be an image that displays the city in entirety, with the expectation that

this could be the image that is reproduced in print media; this image can contain, but is not required to contain, subimages of the buildings or elements of buildings.

Text should be no smaller than 24 px in height, except for your registration number, which should be 12px font in the bottom right corner.

One text document (maximum 1000 words) with an explanation of the design. A statement identifying the design as the intellectual creation of the designer, licensed as

creative commons which 1) allows for adaptations of your work to be shared, and 2) allows for commercial use of your designs.

You will not be judged on the design of your presentation compositions. You will only be judged on the images themselves.

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Submissions

Submit entires at this page no later than June 1, 2015 at 11:59 PM PT

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Schedule

March 1, 2015 Launch of the ContestMay 28, 2015 Deadline for registration (11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time)June 1, 2015 Deadline for submissions (11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time)July 12, 2015 Juried winners announcedAugust 16, 2015 People’s choice award announced

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Jury Panel

Full bios further below.

1. Karina Czapiewska, Director Project Development, DeltaSync (Netherlands)2. Bart Roeffen, Architect and Creative Director, DeltaSync (Netherlands)3. Tom Di Santo, Principal Architect at M:OME, Assoc. Professor Cal Poly SLO (USA)4. Nader Tehrani, Principal Architect at NADAAA, Professor MIT (USA)5. Kay Van Dyke, Architect, Virginia (USA)6. Ryan Roth, Roth-Management (UK)

Shizuo Harada. Architect, Architectural Institute of Japan

1. Randolph Hencken, Executive Director, The Seasteading Institute (USA)2. Joe Quirk, Author & Seavangelist, The Seasteading Institute (USA)3. Supporters of The Seasteading Institute (for People’s Choice Award)

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Evaluation Criteria

The entries will be judged against the following criteria.

Visionary power, in the context of which the jury will focus on the originality and innovative character of the sketch design.

Architectural quality, in the context of which the jury will review the spatial composition, the incorporation of the ocean environment, the expression and materialization, and the consistency of the sketch design.

Sustainability, in the context of use of materials, energy use, water use, ecological quality, social quality, and influence on the surrounding area.

Survivability, in the context that the design considers the nature of the ocean environment including high winds, wave action, and saltwater corrosion .

Feasibility & Practicality, in the context of which the jury will assess the functionality, feasibility, and realism of the sketch design.

Financial pragmatism, in the context that the jury will prefer designs that appear financially sound to realize over those that are fanciful but would require astronomical investment to build.

 

Evaluation Procedure

The jury will evaluate the submitted entries and analyze based on the evaluation criteria. In a yet-to-be-determined number of evaluation rounds, the jury will subsequently establish, on the basis of an integral review, which entries are to be nominated for awarding a prize and will indicate the order of the awardees.

 

The jury’s decisions are binding. Entrants unconditionally accept the decisions of the jury. The jury is authorized to lift the anonymity of all the entries after it has announced the winners. The jury will announce the winning entries, the names of the winners and that of the other entrants on The Seasteading Institute website.

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Contest Terms

Language

The official language of the competition is English.

 

Publicity, Publications and Exhibition

Entrants, jury members and anyone other than the project manager are not allowed to seek publicity with regard to matters relating to the substance of the entries or the competition in general prior to the jury’s announcement of its decision.

 

The designs and names of the winners and other contestants will be published on The Seasteading Institute website.

 

Creative Commons

All entries must be licensed by the designer(s) as creative commons which 1) allows for adaptations of the work to be shared, and 2) allows for commercial use of the designs. This Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, means that others are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even

commercially

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as users of the materials follow the license terms, under the following terms:

Attribution — Others must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the usage of the material.

No additional Restrictions — Users of the materials may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

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Images from Floating City Project Report

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Questions and Answers

All questions submitted should be sent to contest@seasteading.org.All questions and answers will be posted on this contest webpage.

See FAQs section below.Back to the top

FAQs

Who can participate in the competition?Everyone is invited to participate, including students and professionals from any country worldwide.Can we submit more than one entry?Yes, but each project must be registered individually.Can we submit printed boards?No, this is a digital competition and all submissions must be in digital format as outlined in the competition brief.Please clarify the following line item regarding the assignment: “The entries should at least have one image from 3D perspective (render or sketch) and one section with floor plans, and one overall section.”

We have adjusted the line item to:

“The entries must include at least one 3D perspective of the whole the city (render or sketch), at least one sample floor plan, and at least one overall section (a vertical cross section that includes the platform). We encourage multiple 3D perspectives and any relevant floor plans and sections to articulate your concept.”

The assignment calls for at least 10 platforms. Are all the platforms expected to be uniform in design?No. While it is acceptable that multiple platforms will be uniform – for example there may be several platforms designed as housing that are identical – it is up to each designer to decide what to place on top of the 10+ platforms, so long as each platform conforms with the other criteria in the assignment.

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