Brought to you by:

M.Ling's concept for a temporary Amazon Kindle store (M.Ling)

Design of a prefabricated retail location is the latest competition hosted by a challenge-based design technology community

Launched last year, DesignByMany is a challenge-based virtual design community for architects, engineers, students, and construction-industry members interested in publicly sharing technical design knowledge. The site lets users post projects online in response to community-generated challenges or as submissions to frequent sponsored challenges (the sponsor is Hewlett-Packard).

With the goal of bringing more functionality to small, under-utilized urban spaces, the site’s current challenge is to design a rapidly constructible or prefabricated freestanding shop that occupies less than 200 square feet. While permitting issues were left out of the entry criteria, contestants were urged to consider foot traffic and visibility, as well as a location or multiple locations where the project could be deployed. Community voting will end Sunday before a panel of judges selects the final winner. AN‘s Fabrikator takes a look at three designs in the running:

Continue reading after the jump.