Research Design Competitions Foundation supports publication of floor-plan compendium for schools
Research Design Competitions Foundation supports publication of floor-plan compendium for old people's homes
With the support of the Research Design Competitions Foundation, Edition Hochparterre has published a compendium of floor plans for old people's homes (Grundrissfibel Alterszentren), documenting 44 exciting architectural competitions for old people's homes in Switzerland. All of the floor plans are contained as archive entries in the Swiss competition database www.Konkurado.ch.
The boom in the construction of old people's homes in urban and rural areas has led many architects to engage closely with the issue. As a result, a range of exciting and increasingly high-quality floor plans and standard designs have been produced.
The publication taps into this wealth of creativity, making the individual designs easily accessible to architects and authorities. The book seeks to raise awareness among designers/planners and commissioning parties (local councils, authorities, foundations) and to supply them with good examples from competition procedures for this important area of architecture. The aim is to enhance the design quality and liveability of future old people's homes. The publication is modelled on the book Grundrissfibel. 50 Wettbewerbe im gemeinnützigen Wohnungsbau 1999-2012 (Floor-plan compendium. 50 competitions for social housing building projects 1999-2012), the fifth edition of which was published by Edition Hochparterre in March 2014.
The floor-plan compendium is available from Edition Hochparterre at a price of CHF 39 (CHF 31 for Hochparterre subscribers).
The foundation welcomes the successful collaboration with Edition Hochparterre. The floor-plan compendium makes a valuable contribution to expanding and preserving the 'memory of the built and unbuilt environment'. The foundation supports projects like this one which unlock knowledge and make it available to the public and/or researchers and interested specialists.
First online competition published on Konkurado
The first competition to be published on Konkurado and administered and organised using the competition platform has been online since 5 December 2014. The "Expansion of VBZ bus garage and construction of new replacement for ERZ maintenance depot Zurich West" was put out to tender by the City of Zurich Public Works Office (Hochbauamt der Stadt Zürich). As a partner of the foundation and supporter of Konkurado, the office has decided to organise all future competitions via Konkurado.
Using Konkurado is a simpler, faster and more efficient way of organising competitions. It also expands the Konkurado database, thereby enabling the public, researchers and interested specialists to access competition data while also preserving the 'memory of the built and unbuilt environment'.
The competition is being closely monitored by the foundation's management as well as by the operator of Konkurado, in order to enhance the platform's user-friendliness quickly and effectively. Since the competition was published, the foundation has seen a sharp rise in free registrations on Konkurado. Further competitions will follow in early 2015, which will be administered and developed on the platform.
Click here to access the online procedure.
01.10.2013 Publication of research on competitions, promoted by the Foundation
The architect Dr Antigoni Katsakou has published a paper on the importance of competitions for the establishment of emerging talents. The basic research underlying her PhD thesis was supported by the Foundation for Research into Design Competitions.
The article appeared in a collection of papers entitled Architectural Competitions - Histories and Practice, published by Rio Kulturkooperativ.*
