The Omrania | CSBE Student Award for Architectural Design 2018 Eleventh Cycle Announcement
View the 2018 Eleventh Announcement Poster.
Introduction
Omrania and Associates (O&A) and the Center for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE) are happy to announce the 2018 eleventh cycle of the Omrania l CSBE Student Award for Architectural Design.
The Award is intended to honor distinguished architectural graduation projects by students from universities throughout the Arab World.
Eligibility
Students who have completed their Bachelor's degree in architecture or architectural engineering during the 2017 – 2018 academic year from universities in countries belonging to the Arab League are eligible to submit their architectural graduation projects for the Award. The Award is open to all design approaches to architecture.
The Award’s total prize money is USD 10,000. It will be at the discretion of the Award jury to decide on the number of winners and on the distribution of the prize money among them. For the 2017 Award cycle, the Award jury did not select any winners, but selected four honorable mentions and five Projects of Merit amongst whom the prize money was distributed.
Registration
All participants may register online through the Award website www.omraniacsbeaward.org by creating an account with a user name and password, and filling and completing the online Submission Form. The Submission Form will be made available online for participants on June 20, 2018.
Submissions
Submissions must consist of the student’s submission for the final year graduation project. No additional work may be done to the project except for re-formatting it to match the following required specifications.
Submissions must consist of:
Abstract of no more than 100 words
All participants must provide a clear and concise statement in Arabic or English of no more than 100 words describing their project. The statement may be adapted from a text already developed for the graduation project. Abstracts that exceed 100 words in length will not be accepted.
One digital portrait sheet (file format: JPG; sheet Size: A0 (841x 1189 mm); file resolution: 150 dpi; file size: under 10MB)
No additional sheets will be accepted.
The digital sheet must be anonymous and shall not display the name of the participant, the participant’s university, or any other identifying marks.
Since the participants will not be able to present their work in person to the jury members, it is permitted – though not required – to add a few short notes onto the sheet to explain significant aspects of the design. Submitting a digital sheet with a clear and simple presentation is highly encouraged.
Participants should keep an empty white-strip (50 x 841 mm) without images, drawings, or notes at the bottom of the submitted sheet as shown in the template below.
Video Submission
Submitting a video about one’s project is optional. In case a video is submitted, it may not be more than one minute in length. The video will not be accepted in lieu of the drawing submission, and it should not reveal the identity of the applicant, the applicant’s instructor, or the applicant’s university. Otherwise, the video will be excluded from the applicant’s submission.
Formal Certificate of Graduation
All participants shall provide a copy of a formal document that certifies their completion of a Bachelor’s degree in architecture or architectural engineering during the 2017 – 2018 academic year. The certificate must be submitted along with the project abstract and drawing sheet. The certificate may be any university-issued formal document that verifies the participant’s graduation. It must be submitted in JPG or PDF format.
All submissions must be uploaded to the Award website between June 20, 2018 and August 29, 2018.
Applicants will receive a confirmation email within three business days of the successful receipt of the submission material.
The names of the participants, as well as any other identifying details, will remain hidden from the jury members until after the jury has made its final decision.
All the submission items mentioned above may be provided in either Arabic or English.
Disqualification
The Award team fully reserves the right to disqualify participants for any reason it sees fit. For example, if: i) participants do not meet the eligibility criteria for participation in the competition; ii) participants communicate with the competition organizers or jurors in an attempt to influence the judgment of competition entries; iii) entries do not satisfy any of the above-mentioned requirements for submission.
More details on the eligibility and disqualification, as well as the registration and submission process are available on the FAQ section of this website (http://www.omraniacsbeaward.org/frequently-asked-questions-faq-0).
Evaluation
An independent three-member jury will review the entries and select the winners. The names of the jury members and their biographies will be announced shortly.
The jury will evaluate the submissions on their stand-alone merit. In doing so, issues such as clarity of presentation, creativity, design excellence, social responsiveness, function and program, etc. will be taken into account.
The jury’s decision will be final, and the jury has the right to decide on the number of Award recipients, the type of Awards given (winning projects, honourable mentions, projects of merit ...), and the distribution of the prize money among them.
Jury members of the Award’s 2018 eleventh cycle
Elias Anastas
Elias Anastas is the Design Director at A.A.U. Anastas in Bethlehem and Paris, and the co-founder of Local Industries in Bethlehem.
Anastas studied Architecture at the School of Architecture Paris-Val-de-Siene. He returned to Bethlehem in 2010, where he established Local Industries, a furniture design studio that combines local know-how with modern fabrication technologies and contemporary design skills to produce furniture and other products.
Anastas has worked on many art installations in the United Kingdom, Palestine, and Dubai, among others. His work shows a rethinking of familiar approaches regarding traditional materials such as stone and wood.
Sahel Al Hiyari
Sahel Al Hiyari is the principal architect at Sahel Al Hiyari and Partners in Amman. He holds Bachelor's degrees in both Architecture and the Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as a Master's of Architecture in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Al Hiyari in addition undertook post-graduate studies at the School of Architecture at the University of Venice, where he also taught from 1993 to 1995. He also taught at Harvard and at the American University in Beirut.
In 2002, Al Hiyari was chosen as the first architect to participate in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative as a protégé of Álvaro Siza in Portugal. His architectural work has been published in a number of Jordanian and international architectural publications, and has been exhibited in Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, and the United States. Al Hiyari is also a painter, and exhibitions of his work have been mounted in Jordan, Lebanon, and Italy.
Al Hiyari had served on the first jury of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award for Architectural Design in 2008. He also was a jury member of the 2007 tenth cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, as well as the 2012 first cycle of the Abdullatif Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture.
Ammar Khammash
Ammar Khammash is the principal architect and founder of Khammash Architects in Amman. He received his Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1986, and carried out post-graduate studies in Ethno-archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at Al-Yarmouk University (1987 - 1988).
Khammash's work features a wide range of residential, cultural, renovation and restoration, sustainable tourism, planning, and destination design projects. They include the Royal Academy for Nature Conservation in Ajloun (2014), the Feynan Eco-Lodge in Wadi Feynan (2002), and the Wild Jordan Nature Center in Amman (2001).
He is well established as an expert in Jordan's cultural and natural heritage, and has launched a number of websites on Jordan's flora, geology, and heritage. His expertise spans over different disciplines including history, geology, archaeology, ecology, botany, ethnography, and socio-economics.
He is the author of a number of publications including Notes on Village Architecture in Jordan (1986). He is also an established painter and has held more than twenty art exhibitions. His art work has been published in Ancient Landscapes: The Landscape Paintings of Ammar Khammash (2009).
Award and Exhibition
The winning projects will be declared at an Award ceremony. The location and date of the ceremony will be announced at a later date. The winning projects and a selection of submissions will be exhibited immediately after the Award ceremony and for a few days following it. The winning projects will also be published on the Award website and on the Award’s dedicated social media channels.
The Award will cover travel and accommodation expenses for winners from outside the country where the ceremony will be held. Travel coverage will be from the countries of the universities where they studied (or equivalent locations). Should any of the winning projects be the product of a group effort, the Award will cover the expenses of one representative from the group. The Award ceremonies so far have been held in Amman, Manama, Beirut, and Sharjah.
The Award will also cover travel and accommodation expenses for the instructors who supervised the winning projects from the countries of the universities where they taught during the relevant year of the Award cycle (or equivalent locations) to where the ceremony is held. Should any of the winning projects have more than one supervising instructor, the Award will cover the expenses of one instructor.
Inquiries and Updates
For additional inquiries, please call CSBE at (962) (6) 461-5297 or send an email to info@omraniacsbeaward.org. All developments regarding the Award will be posted on the Award website and Facebook page: www.omraniacsbeaward.org;https://www.facebook.com/Omrania.CSBE.Student.Award
Note: Detailed information on the Award’s previous ten cycles (including winning projects, biographies of jury members, and jury reports) are available on the CSBE website (www.csbe.org) and on the Award website (www.omraniacsbeaward.org). All submitted projects for the 2010 and 2011 cycles of the Award may be viewed on the Award's Facebook page. All projects submitted for the 2012 - 2017 cycles of the Award may be viewed on the Award website.