Young architects and designers are invited to submit work to the annual Architectural League Prize Competition. Projects of all types, either theoretical or real, and executed in any medium, are welcome. The jury will select work for presentation in lectures, digital media, and an exhibition in June 2019. Winners will receive a cash prize of $2,000.
Established in 1981 to recognize visionary work by young practitioners, The Architectural League Prize is an annual competition, lecture series, and exhibition organized by The Architectural League and its Young Architects + Designers Committee. Learn more about the Architectural League Prize’s past winners here.
Theme JUST
The idea that an architectural work might be just—whether formally, materially, contextually, culturally, or otherwise—invokes the diverse and interdependent concerns that shape contemporary practice. In its myriad references, Just explores the implicit tensions between architecture’s affinity for the just so in materials, tectonics, and organization, and a call to act justly.Just-
Escalating conditions of sociopolitical turmoil and environmental calamity have prompted renewed attention to the ethics of architecture. How might architecture serve justice? Confront complex challenges across scales, mediums, and geographies? Build new equitable paradigms for action? Can architecture engage a breadth of constituencies, environments, and species? In an era of global turbulence, how might architecture’s ends justify the means? Can architects advocate for architectural excellence and beauty while still addressing social concerns? Can just architecture, with its laborious process from conceptualization to construction, become a justified statement in itself?
Just explores architectural action with the understanding that a multiplicity of coexisting and contradictory attitudes may be constructive, liberating, and justified. This year’s Architectural League Prize competition asks entrants to consider the just in how they approach the practice of architecture, whether through experimentation in research and design advocacy or by advancing speculative and applied techniques within the discipline.
Eligibility
The competition is open only to current full-time residents, who need not be citizens, of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Entrants must be ten years or less out of a bachelor or masters program. Current students are ineligible. Entrants may submit individually or as a group. If the individual(s) is/are the sole principal(s) of a firm, the winning firm name will be listed as well. Entrants must submit work done independently; no work done as an employee of a firm where the entrant is not a principal or partner is eligible for submission. No student work completed for any academic program or degree is eligible for submission. Educators may not include work done in their studios or for their teaching. Past League Prize winners are ineligible. If only one partner of a firm is eligible, he or she can enter as a single entrant. He or she must include a signed document from all other partners describing the collaborative nature of the work, and the firm will not be listed as a recipient of the prize. Collaborative work between unrelated firms or individuals is eligible if the partnership is equal; any project with collaborators must include a signed document from the other collaborators describing the collaborative nature of the work. Collaborative work will be considered within the context of an individual’s complete portfolio
Award Winners will present their work in lectures, digital media, and an exhibition in June 2019. They will receive a cash prize of $2,000.
For more information and submission requirements, visit archleague.org
