[deadline: 30/01/2009]
The Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition was created in 2003 to promote activism, social involvement, and entrepreneurship in young designers. Metropolis saw the need for a new type of competition, one that went beyond the usual beauty pageants for finished projects, a competition that would generate and reward ideas. The competition is open to any designer or architect in practice for ten years or less, as well as design students. Each project recognized has embodied the core values of good design—incorporating systems thinking, sustainability, accessibility, materials exploration, historic relevance and technology—while forwarding our thinking on what designers can accomplish. The breadth of proposals has been stunning: building projects, urban planning and community building schemes, responsive interior environments, population pressure issues, new materials, ergonomics, product design, social and housing solutions, environmental management, water purity, and waste disposal in crisis situations and so on. The prize of $10,000 in seed money for developing the projects, plus the publicity they receive, have helped winners’ and runners-ups’ projects leap from the drawing board to implementation and production. For 2009 the driving question is: “How do we fix our energy addiction?” It’s a big question with a lot of different kinds of answers. The problems with energy waste are entrenched in many of our systems and products in ways that people are often unaware. An urban plan that promotes walk-able neighborhoods and mass transit is one way to start looking at fuel economy. Fuel is also used to manufacture and transport materials. Think about how we live and work, what we use, how we get where we need to go, hidden costs to our pocket books and the environment, across the whole design spectrum. Focus on one area that needs fixing—products, interiors, buildings and landscape, communication systems, or anything else you can imagine—and develop your idea fully. And above all, think of our energy addiction as a design problem at all scales. The $10,000 prize is intended to support designers whose entries reflect considerations of sustainability, distribution and manufacturing systems, economy, current technologies and materials, function, and provocative form and can speak to any one of the 6 sub-disciplines supported by the magazine—architecture, urban planning, landscape design, interior design, product design, graphic design. Employees of Sponsors are not eligible. All entrants agree to be bound by the Official Rules. Info: e-mail: NextGen09@metropolismag.com; www.metropolismag.com