Friday 07 June 2013

ARCASIA Students' Architectural Design Competition 2013

on Friday 07 June 2013 - 17:45:30 | by T Z H
ARCASIA Nepal 2013 logoBrief

The Architects’ Regional Council Asia (ARCASIA) is a Council of the presidents of the National Institutes of Architects of eighteen Asian countries that are members of ARCASIA. Every alternate year, an ARCASIA FORUM is hosted by one of the member countries of ARCASIA. Society of Nepalese Architects (SONA) will host ARCASIA FORUM -17 in 2013 in Kathmandu, Nepal with the theme of “Spirituality in Architecture” with a sub-theme of “Image of the City”. ARCASIA Board has decided to organize a design competition among the individual students of ARCASIA member countries in this FORUM.

The design competition along the Asian spirit will try to create a space in their specific countries where youths of ARCASIA can gather, exchange views, share ideas on varieties of subjects. Architecture students will design an ‘Asian Youth Center’ to cater this need of the Asian youths. This may be the contribution of the Asian Architecture students to support the Asian spirit manifested in its economical, cultural and scientific achievements.

Eligibility

The competition is open to 3rd and 4th year individual students of all the architecture colleges that are accredited and/or recognized by the respective Institutes of Architects in the ARCASIA countries. Two best entries from each country as selected by the respective Institutes of Architects shall be exhibited at the FORUM in Kathmandu and the first, second and third prize winners shall be decided by an international jury.

Schedule and Submission Procedure

May 15, 2013– First electronic Announcement to all ARCASIA Member Institutes, Chairperson ARCASIA, and Convener ACAE.  
August 20, 2013 – Formation of Jury by NIA to select two designs (Country Entries) among the, to be submitted designs. The name of the Jury members shall be confidential till September 1, 2013.  
August 20, 2013 – Selection of two best designs internally in each college.  
August 30, 2013 – Submission of the selected two designs both electronic and hard copies from each colleges to the respective NIA.   
September 6, 2103 – Final selection of two best designs as ‘Countries Entries’ by the Jury formed on August 20, 2013 by respective NIA. 
September 9, 2013 – NIAs inform of the selected two designs and the name of the two winner students, Convener ARCASIA Students Design competition, Chair ACAE, and Chairperson ARCASIA. Respective NIAs will send the electronic copies of the ‘Countries Entries’ to the Jury members on September 9, 2013.
September 15, 2013 – Dispatch the hard copies of the Country Entries designs to the Convener ARCASIA Students Design Competition at the following address. Respective NIAs shall ensure the compliance of all the requirements before the ‘Countries Entries’ are dispatched for final submission. This dispatch date is an arbitrary date. Respective NIAs shall make sure, that hard copies will reach the following address not later than September 30, 2013. The procedure to be adopted for selection of designs within the colleges and by the National Institute is entirely at the discretion of the colleges and the Institute.  
September 20, 2013 – Selection of the final best three designs by the Jury, and ACAE invites the winners students to the FORUM-17.
October 6, 2013 – Exhibition of the Country Entries during the ARCASIA FORUM – 17 and Final Jury deliberation, announcement of the prize winners.

Prize

Three students, winners of the competition shall be the official delegates to the ARCASIA FORUM - 17. They will be the honored guests of the Society of Nepalese Architects (SONA) and will be offered complementary registration in the FORUM-17.

First Prize : ARCASIA Student Prize, a gold medal paid for by ARCASIA and citation  
Second Prize : US $ 500.00 in cash from SONA and citation  
Third Prize : US $ 300.00 in cash from SONA and citation   

All the final entries will be given citation.  

Visit the Competition site to know more. 

Wednesday 01 May 2013

Why and how incidents like the Rana Plaza building collapse in Savar happen in Bangladesh

on Wednesday 01 May 2013 - 14:37:49 | by admin
savar building collapse photo by Abir Abdullah
[Photo: Abir Abdullah]
 
April 24th 2013, morning, the nine storied Rana Plaza in Savar near Bangladeshi capital Dhaka collapsed, it took at least 400 lives, around 2500 survivors were rescued alive and around a thousand more are missing. If we look into the facts that are related to building construction in Bangladesh and this incident we will have to connect a few dots here.
 
To make a building in Dhaka area (the boundary covers nearby suburbs and towns beyond Dhaka metropolitan, thus it covers the incident area Savar) the owner needs to take permission from 13 different organizations (along with the main authority RajUK) to get the permit of construction and approval of architectural design (and in case of large projects, structural and other designs), it includes municipality, environment department, fire service, electricity and gas distribution authorities etc. Apparently RajUK coordinates this whole approval process with all the organizations. During the construction, the overall responsibility of checking if the construction is done according to approved design is also the duty of RajUK and all other related organizations. In case of building a factory you need to take a few additional approvals from factory building related authority and if it is a garments factory then you also need license and approval of the non-government organization BGMEA an association of garments owners that regulates the garments business in Bangladesh. If corruption plays any role at any point in this process, incidents like the collapse of Rana Plaza and fire at Tazreen Garments may happen any time. And many of these organizations are infamous for institutionalizing corruption. Allegedly often these paper works are done or overlooked by political influences and bribe.

Particularly in case of Rana Plaza the problem might have happened in many different layers. Allegedly the building was designed to be 6 storied, the owner made additional 3 floors without permission. It was the duty of the local authorities to prevent the owner from doing that at the first place. There could be fault in the structural design. Then the usage of the building, it was architecturally and structurally designed as a commercial complex, for small shops and offices. The dead-load and live-load of garments factories are far more than commercial buildings, counting the number of people per sft and the weight of the heavy machinaries. So even if the initial structural design was ok as a commercial building, using it as garments factories might have made the structure fail. It is difficult to tell what exactly happened without extensive engineering investigation. It was also the responsibility of architects and engineers who worked for that project in whatever phases to check it's legal status.

So clearly all the organizations that let the owner make this building without following the rules and let them use it for unapproved purpose are responsible. Of course along with the building owner, the owners of the garments factories for doing accepting all the corruptions related to building construction and it's usage. And particularly they are responsible for forcing the workers to go inside that building that day even after knowing the warning.
The troublesome fact of all is the paradoxical existence of the two big authorities RajUK for building construction and BGMEA for regulating garments industry. RajUK has it's own real estate business, they sell land and apartments and they are also the authority of regulating building construction and real estates, that's contradictory. A single organization can't run a business and also be the regulatory body of it. Similarly BGMEA is a garments owners' association, it is easily imaginable what may happen when all the regulatory authority and duty of looking after the welfare of workers remain under the owners' control. So Bangladesh need separate independent commissions as the regulatory authorities of building construction and also the garments industry to reduce unethical practices and corruption.
 
A few good things happened recently with building codes and laws. Bangladesh has a national building code BNBC, first drafted in 1993 and in 2006 it became mandatory by law to follow the code with a provision of 7 years imprisonment if violated. In 2006 a new construction law came out with a lot of good changes by the help of years of efforts of the architects and related professionals. These codes and laws are not entirely perfect, however they are under constant practice, observation and development. An updated version of the building construction act is under development with many necessery changes.
We hope those efforts be successful and the laws be enforced properly to prevent tragedies like Rana Plaza and save human lives.

Wednesday 12 December 2012

International Union of Architects - 5th Young Architects International Award

on Wednesday 12 December 2012 - 16:36:25 | by T Z H
UIA Young Architects Meeting 2012The Chamber of Architects of Turkey, in collaboration with its regional Antalya Branch, and with the support of the International Union of Architects, has launched the fifth edition of the International Award for Young Architects. This year’s award particularly recognizes the winning projects in an international ideas competition focusing on temporary sheltering spaces. The need for temporary shelters for victims of natural and man-made disasters and those disadvantaged persons left on the edge of society is greater and greater. The role and the response of architects worldwide in this context with which they are not necessarily familiar is the aim of this competition that will be followed by an open debate to be held during the next Young Architects meeting in Antalya, on 25 May 2013.

The main aim of the Event is to evaluate the architectural responses to the needs of temporary housing and open them to debate. Furthermore, the provision of temporary housing needs of disaster victims is expected to be considered as a spatial configuration and a stage for examining the current developments in material and structural systems. Therefore, the temporary housing settlements – which came forth as a result of disasters – are expected to produce the outcome of increase in the quality of architectural design. The participants of the competition are required to define a context of a disaster of their choice, to produce demountable design proposals for temporary housing units and settlements in an economic and practical way. Both visual and textual formats are going to be used for the presentation of the design proposals.

Eligibility

Participation in the competition is open to architects worldwide, born after 1974, registered to the organization of architects in their country.

Registration  
Registration for the competition takes place at the same time as the submission of entries. Participation is free of charge. The working languages are Turkish and English.  

Schedule

Announcement:                                               November 05, 2012
Deadline for questions:                                    December 17, 2012
Deadline for answers of the questions:               December 28, 2012
Deadline submission of projects:                       March 15, 2013
Evaluation of the Jury:                                      April 05, 2013
Announcement of the results:                           April 12, 2013
Exhibition of the projects:                                May 25 2013
Award ceremony:                                            May 25, 2013      

Submission

Entries will be submitted anonymously. Submissions will include a sealed envelope containing the competitor’s personal information. The identity code of the participants will be written on the outside the of envelope in which applicants’ name, surname, telephone number, e-mail address, communication address, photocopy of their identity card/passport and their registration number at their Chamber/Institute will be clearly written. In case of team participation, all team members’ information will be in this closed identity envelope. Project boards will be prepared according to the template. The template can be found on website. The Project boards (70cm x 100 cm) will be submitted DIGITALLY without printing, at least 150dpi resolution, CMYK format, TIFF/JPEG/EPS type document recorded in DVD/CD.

Prize
1st prize           2.500 euros
2nd prize         1.500 euros
3rd prize          1.000 euros  

Visit the Competition site to know more. 

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