“Fairy Tales” competition

Blank Space announces the world’s first architecture storytelling competition: “Fairy Tales.”

Fairy Tales is an open, international, ideas competition that challenges creatives from all professional realms to develop visionary, narrative-based design proposals.

Architecture competitions are the lifeblood of the profession, but they haven’t changed that much in the past 100 years. Architects are still designing single building typologies like skyscrapers, museums, and houses ad infinitum. By retreating into itself, architecture has lost its ability to send universal messages, to represent culture in its time, and to address issues that are at the core of human existence. That is why Blank Space, an online platform for architecture, is launching the world’s first architecture storytelling competition: “Fairy Tales.”

Fairy Tales challenges participants to develop visionary proposals that take fun seriously and are audacious enough to ignite imaginations. The proposals will combine text-based architectural fairy tales with innovative graphic representations, and in doing so, seek to unlock the power of architecture by improving the way that it is shared, digested, and communicated.

To assess the entrants to the competition, Blank Space curated a team of experts who are each redefining their respective professions. The jury includes: Paula Scher, Partner at Pentagram; Will Alsop, Director at All Design; Mitchell Joachim, Co-President of Terreform ONE; Nigel Coates, Founder of Nigel Coates Studio; Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota; and Francesco Lipari, Co-founder of Cityvision.

“Since the beginning of recorded time, and perhaps earlier, fairy tales have been a means to confront and conquer the anxieties and hardships of humankind through metaphor,” says Professor Jack Zipes, a jury member for the competition. “Similarly, good architecture can tell stories and give structure to the chaos that surrounds us. Examining architecture through the lens of fairy tales, as this competition does, will unleash the fantastic potential that architecture possesses.”

The success of contemporary animated movies and the resurgence of the fantasy literary genre testify that fairy tales are very much alive, potentially more so with former children than with actual children. Even in the news, the element of fantasy plays a key role in selecting what stories go viral. It’s a great time to be a storyteller.

Whether or not we realize it, stories form the foundation of architectural proposals, and it is through various narrative tools that a project’s general constraints are outlined, and an architectural strategy is put in place. If narrative tells a story in time, architecture builds a story in space.

“Imagination transcends professional boundaries. It was crucial to Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and JK Rowling, and it’s important to my Terreform ONE group as well,” says Dr. Mitchell Joachim, Co-President of Terreform ONE. “The Fairy Tales competition encourages designers to explore the creative potential of their imagination, and it will be exciting to see how the projects push past the boundaries of architecture into uncharted territories.”

The early registration deadline is December 6, and the deadline for submissions is January 17, 2014. The jury will award 1st, 2nd, 3rd Place, and a selection of Honorable Mentions.

AWARDS

1ST PLACE: 1,250 USD

2ND PLACE: 600 USD

3RD PLACE: 400 USD

HONORABLE MENTIONS: The jury will select up to 10 honorable mentions.

The life of the submissions doesn’t stop at the conclusion of the competition. Subsequent to the competition, Blank Space is launching the inaugural issue of Blank Space Magazine. Select entries will be included in the magazine, as well as featured prominently on the Blank Space website, and published by our media partners and other outlets around the world.

To register for the competition, or for more detailed information, please visit: www.blankspaceproject.com