Overview of Design Competition
Every building inherits a history and shapes our cities with a complex architectural legacy. Traditional structures hold cultural memory and climate wisdom but risk being lost or preserved as relics. Conversely, decades of rapid, generic construction produced buildings that ignored local climate and identity.
Regardless of building status, the embodied carbon locked within their walls represents an environmental cost already paid. Replacing them with yet another building solves nothing and learns nothing.
This competition challenges students to investigate the existing structure—its climate knowledge, cultural memory, triumphs, failures, and flaws—treating it as the raw material for invention. The process begins with rigorous archaeology of what is present, followed by invention discovered from within, not imposed from outside. The outcome is not restoration, but a future rooted in this specific place, this culture, this climate, and inheritance.