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Registration Start: 3 June 2024 - ✅
Registration Deadline: 2 August 2024 - ✅
Submission Deadline: 20 September 2024 - ✅
Winners Announced: 11 October 2024
- First Place: €500
- Second Place: €300
- Third Place: €200
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Useful Links:
- ⚠️ Download the Competition Brief PDF Here 📄
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Fill out this form to Register🔗 (Registration is now closed) - 💡 Projects from around the web that might provide some inspiration
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Introduction
We are happy to announce this architecture competition open to all students of Universities and Architecture schools in Portugal. This competition intends to provide local students a real-world challenge to conceptualize an eco-friendly and sustainable retreat centre in southern Portugal.
There is a minimum prize of €500 for the winner, €300 for second place, and €200 for third place. All those taking part will receive special access and discounts to the retreat centre once built.
The Competition - Overview
Our competition challenges students to design an eco-friendly retreat destination that embodies the essence of relaxation, disconnection from the outside world, and self-discovery.
Participants will have the opportunity to create a destination that seamlessly integrates with the surrounding environment, offering guests a peaceful refuge away from the chaos of modern life, inspires personal growth and transformation, and promotes environment stewardship and sustainability.
The centre should include spaces for mental rejuvenation through practices such as yoga and meditation. It should also include spaces for activities that focus the mind through physical creation and expression like painting, woodworking, pottery, and other crafts.
Accommodations should be relatively simple, comfortable, and easy to construct and maintain. Proposals can include anything from small singular private buildings providing complete solitude, or shared accommodation to encourage social interaction. Or both.
The Competition - Details
Students are encouraged to be creative, but realistic and feasible. Making use of local and low-cost resources, materials, and styles is a plus.
- Assume the land is between 50.000 and 100.000 square meters and located inland, in the mid to southern half of Portugal. Submissions should not assume direct access to, or views of, the ocean.
- Flora should aim to be indigenous and varied, while creating sustainable greenery and natural shade. They should include both fruiting and non fruiting varieties.
- This destination should attempt to be as self-sufficient as possible with regard to power, water, and sewage.
- Include a mix of small-unit housing. These should be simple, but comfortable and can be any style including tents, huts, cabins, caravans, tree-houses, containers. Submissions should avoid large structures with too many living units.
- There should be facilities such as showers and toilets, but they do not need to be physically connected to the accommodations.
- Common areas are encouraged to not be in a single structure, and should include a lounge/relax area, yoga/meditation, workshops for painting and woodworking etc.
The Competition - Submission Format
- All should be in PDF format.
- Feel free to use any page dimensions or lengths. Assume your submission will be reviewed digitally, it does not need to be print-ready.
- The submission should include:
- Proposed floor plan or layout of the property
- Proposed accommodations and ideally at least one rendering of the “highlight” accommodation unit
- Common area & workshop buildings
- The core submission should include your name, email address, phone number, and university or college you’re attending.
- Optional Submission (Not considered in the judging of the core submission): If you are interested in possible freelance opportunities in the future related to making this project a reality, please include an additional file with your contact information, description of yourself and the kind of work you like to do.