2009-2010
Steel Design
Student Competition

RE-LIGARE INSTITUTE

Reconnecting Mind And Body

• Program
• Guidelines
• Judging
• Resources
• FAQ
• Submission

Guidelines

SCHEDULE

Initial judging will take place May 24th - June 24th. The final face-to-face judging will take place over the weekend of June 25th. Winners will be contacted directly and we expect to have a press release out by July 2nd to all participants.

AWARDS

Winning students and their faculty sponsors will receive cash prizes totaling $14,000. The design jury will meet in June 2010 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 web site at www.acsa-arch.org and the AISC web site at www.aisc.org.

Winning students and their faculty sponsors will receive cash prizes totaling $14,000 with distribution as follows:

A limited number of honorable mentions may also be awarded at the jury's discretion.

Prize‑winning submissions will be exhibited at the 2011 ACSA Annual Meeting and at the 2011 AIA National Convention as well as published in a competition summary catalog.

ELIGIBILITY

Because the support of AISC is largely derived from steel organizations in the U.S., the competition is open to students from ACSA member schools in the U.S., Canada and Mexico only. The competition is open to upper level students (third year or above, including graduate students). All student entrants are required to work under the direction of a faculty sponsor. Entries will be accepted for individual as well as team solutions.  Teams must be limited to a maximum of five students. Submissions should be principally the product of work in a design studio or related class.

REGISTRATION

Faculty who wish to enroll students must complete an online Registration Form (available at www.acsa-arch.org/competitions) by February 9, 2010. Complete a form for each individual student or team of students participating. Students or teams wishing to enter the competition on their own must have a faculty sponsor, who should complete the form. There is no entry or submission fee required to participate in the competition. Each registered student and faculty sponsor will receive a confirmation email that will include information on how to upload your final submission online.

FACULTY RESPONSIBILITY

The administration of the competition at each institution is left to the discretion of the faculty sponsor(s) within the guidelines set forth in this document.  Work on the competition should be structured over the course of one semester during the 2009-2010 academic year.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

Each faculty sponsor is expected to develop a system to evaluate the work of the students using the criteria set forth in this program. The evaluation process should be an integral part of the design process, encouraging students to scrutinize their work in a manner similar to that of the jury. The final result of the design process will be a submission of up to four presentation boards describing the design solution. In addressing the specific issues of the design challenge, submissions must clearly demonstrate the design solution’s response to the following requirements:

• A strength of the argument and the proposal’s ability to support the concept for the design (Category I);
• An articulate mastery of formal concepts and aesthetic values;
• A mature awareness and innovative approach to environmental issues;
• An elegant expressive understanding of the material – Steel;
• A thorough appreciation of human needs and social responsibilities;
• A capability to integrate functional aspects of the problem in a architectural manner, and
• A capacity to derive the maximum potential afforded by the program.

REQUIRED DRAWINGS

Each presentation must directly address the criteria outlined in the Design Challenge and Criteria for Judging and must include (but are not limited to) the following required drawings: site plan showing the surrounding buildings, topography, and circulation patterns; floor plans; elevations and building sections sufficient to show site context and major program elements; large‑scale drawing(s), either orthographic or three‑dimensional, illustrating the use of structural steel; a three‑dimensional representation in the form of either an axonometric, perspective, or model photographs, one of which should illustrate the character of the project. Submission must include:

• 4 digital boards at 20” x 20”;
• illustrate graphically or otherwise the use of steel construction;
• a Design Essay;

Submissions that do not adhere to the program criteria outlined must provide a Program Brief (required for all entrants in Category II – OPEN). Incomplete or undocumented entries will be disqualified. All drawings should be presented at a scale appropriate to the design solution and include a graphic scale and north arrow.

DIGITAL PRESENTATION FORMAT

Submissions must be designed on no more than four 20” x 20” digital boards. The names of student participants, their schools, or faculty sponsors, must NOT appear on the boards.

All boards are required to be uploaded through the ACSA website in Portable Document Format (PDF) or Image (JPEG) Files. Participants should keep in mind that, due to the large number of entries, preliminary review does not allow for the hanging end-to-end display of presentation boards. Accordingly, participants should not use text or graphics that cross over from board to board. The names of student participants, their schools, or faculty sponsors, must NOT appear on any of the submitted material.

DESIGN ESSAY

A brief essay, 500 words maximum, (in English) is required as part of the submission describing the most important concepts of the design project. Keep in mind that the presentation should graphically convey the design solution and context as much as possible, and not rely on the design essay to convey a basic understanding of the project. The names of student participants, their schools, or faculty sponsors, must NOT appear in the design essay.

ONLINE PROJECT SUBMISSION

Entries must be uploaded through the ACSA Competition website at www.acsa-arch.org/competitions by 5:00 pm, Eastern Time, on May 19, 2010. If the Submission is from a team of students all student team members will have the ability to upload the digital files. Once the final submit button is pressed no additional edits, uploads, or changes can be made. Once the final Submission is uploaded and submitted each student will receive a confirmation email notification.

A final Submission upload must contain the following:

• Completed online submission information including all Team Members and Faculty Sponsors;
• Each of the four 20”x20” boards uploaded individually as a high resolution Portable Document Format (PDF) or Image (JPEG) Files;
• A Design Essay.

Winning projects will be required to submit original files/images for use in competition publications and exhibit materials.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Program updates, including information on jury members as they are confirmed, may be found on the ACSA web site at www.acsa‑arch.org/competitions.

Additional questions on the competition program and submissions should be addressed to:
Eric W. Ellis, Project Manager
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
1735 New York Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20006
Tel:  202.785.2324
e-mail: eellis@acsa-arch.org

Competition Program (PDF)