THE CHALLENGE

The competition challenges participants to design a mid-rise, mixed-use complex with affordable housing units, a job training/educational facility, a center for innovative manufacturing of wood technology, and a distribution center. The project site is in Red Hook, Brooklyn a neighborhood in some flux, cut off from much of Brooklyn geographically, yet increasingly vibrant.

Aspiring to regenerate a dissipating urban manufacturing sector and address the housing needs of New York City, entrants will be asked to design a place for the creation of originative vocational opportunities embracing new wood technology. Entrants will be challenged to propose construction systems in scenarios that draw optimally on the performance characteristics of a variety of wood technologies.

TIMBER

The competition will challenge participants to interpret, invent, and deploy numerous methods of building systems, with a focus on innovations in wood design on a real site. For thousands of years, solid wood has been used as a building material. Timber is an ideal green building material: it is well suited for a broad range of structural and aesthetic applications, it offers high performance characteristics; and wood is an economic driver to maintain forests and protect jobs in our communities.

CRITERIA FOR JUDGING

Criteria for the judging of submissions will include: timber/wood as the primary structural material, creative and innovative use of timber/wood in the design solution, successful response of the design to its surrounding context, and successful response to basic architectural concepts such as human activity needs, structural integrity, and coherence of architectural vocabulary.