Eighth Announcement — Center for the Study of the Built Environment

Omrania and Associates (O&A) and the Center for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE) are happy to announce the 2015 eighth 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 2014 – 2015 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 15,000. 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 2014 Award cycle, the Award jury selected two groups of winning projects: a group of equal first-place winners (six projects), and a group of equal second-place winners (five projects).

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 25, 2015.

Submission

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 of no more than 100 words describing their project. The statement must be typed and filled in the assigned box online at the Award website. 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 boards to explain significant aspects of the design. Submitting a digital sheet with clear and simple presentation is highly encouraged.
- Participants are asked to keep an empty white-strip (50x 841 mm) without images, drawings, or notes at the bottom of the submitted sheet as shown in the template below.

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 2014 – 2015 academic year. The certificate must be submitted along with the abstract paragraph, the drawing sheet, and the Submission Form. The certificate may be any university-issued formal document that verifies the participant’s graduation. It must be submitted / uploaded in JPG or PDF format. All submissions must be uploaded to the Award website between June 25, 2015 and August 25, 2015.

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.

Evaluation

An independent three-member jury will review the entries and select the winners. The jury conssists of:

Hani Imam Hussaini is the founder and director of Almarsam Architects & Engineers in Amman. He received his architectural education from the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees, as well as his Diploma in Architecture.

He practiced architecture in the United Kingdom, both independently and at the London practice of Panter Hudspith Architects. He was a Partner and Head of Architecture at Omrania & Associates, and director of its Jordan office. Apart from Jordan and the United Kingdom, he has been involved in projects in Greece, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the West Bank. His experience spans a wide variety of sectors that include offices, residential, commercial, retail, leisure, hospitality, and sports projects.

Hussaini is a founding member of the Center for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE), and continues to serve as a member of the Board of Directors. While at Omrania, he was instrumental in establishing the Omrania | CSBE Student Award in Architectural Design.

Josep Lluís Mateo is the founder of the architectural practice mateoarquitectura in Barcelona, and Professor of Architecture and Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He studied architecture at the Barcelona School of Architecture, and holds a PhD from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He also has been a Visiting Professor in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Mateo is a member of l’Ordre des Architectes de Paris, the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA) in Zürich, and the Catalan Professional Architectural Association (COAC) in Barcelona.

He has designed numerous award winning projects. These include the urbanization of Ullastret (Spain), the Amsterdam Housing Block, the Barcelona Convention Center, “The Factory” office building in Paris, the PGGM Headquarters in Zeist (The Netherlands), the Cinematheque of Catalonia, the Cultural Center and Urban development of Castelo Branco (Portugal), and the remodeling of the Ninot Market in Barcelona.

Publications devoted to his work include Josep Lluís Mateo, Opere e progetti (2007) and On Building: Matter and Form (2012). Exhibits of his work have been organized at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Galerie d’Architecture in Paris.

Mateo is also the author of a number of publications including Bauen und Denken (2002), Textos Instrumentales (2007), and Middle East: Contemporary Architectural Conditions (2012).

Nader Tehrani the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City and Principal of the Boston-based architectural practice NADAAA. He also was a Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Moreover, he has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design, and the University of Toronto as the Frank O. Gehry International Visiting Chair.

He received a Bachelors of Fine Arts and a Bachelors of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, and continued his studies at the Architectural Association, where he attended the Post-Graduate program in History and Theory. Following that, he received his Masters in Architecture and Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Tehrani's numerous projects include the design of three schools of architecture. He has completed the Hinman Research Building at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, and is currently working on completion of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

His work has been recognized with notable awards including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture. He has also received the Harleston Parker Award for the Northeastern University Multi-faith Spiritual Center and the Hobson Award for the Georgia Institute of Technology Hinman Research Building. Throughout his career, Tehrani has received sixteen Progressive Architecture Awards as well as numerous American Institute of Architects, Boston Society of Architects, and Interior Design awards. In 2013 and 2014, NADAAA was ranked no. 1 in design by Architect Magazine's Top 50 Firms in the United States.

Tehrani's work has been widely published and has also been widely exhibited at various venues including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. His work is also part of the permanent collection of the Canadian Center for Architecture and the Nasher Sculpture Center.

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 winners and on the distribution of the prize money among them.

Additional support for the 2015 eighth cycle of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award is provided by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

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. 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 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 web site and on the Award’s dedicated social media channels (Facebook and Twitter).

If you wish to be informed of any updates on the Award, please provide us with your email address.

Note: Detailed information on the Award’s previous seven cycles (including winning projects, biographies of jury members, and jury reports) are available on the CSBE website 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 and 2014 cycles of the Award may be viewed on the Award website.