In this article, we continue our series on Competitions.archi, presenting a collection of articles on different architectural competitions. Today, we will be featuring the winner of the African Urban School Competition by ArchStorming Enko.
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Introduction
A competition is always an unknown challenge, a desire of making the most of what you have, trusting the people in your team and hoping for the best outcome possible.
The African Urban School Competition asked us to design a school in Mali, Bamako that took the Enko Education principles of growth and opportunity through education and applied them onto a building that would be able to vary its size depending on the constraints of the different lots it would be constructed on.
Why did we choose this competition?
We chose this competition because our team is composed of 3 young architects who are trying to make their way into the architectural world, but it’s difficult to start getting commissions that will actually get built, so we were doing our research on competitions and came across the African Urban School Competition. We read the brief and found that it was a really good fit for us because we are interested in education, social projects and new challenges on size, design methods, contexts and users. It was the perfect opportunity to make a really good project that would help the youth of Mali grow in a way that would guide their path into a better future.
Unfortunately, the competition didn’t go through with the construction. Even though this didn’t happen, hopefully it gives us the tools to keep getting a better understanding of much needed educational projects around the world.
Idea
We began the competition through the first obvious, but important part, that we attribute as one of the defining points of winning: reading the brief. As simple as it may sound, to familiarize yourself 100% with the provided text and taking the most important points not as constraints or requirements to be completed but as opportunities for design, will generate a change in the whole discourse of your proposal whilst making it stand out from the beginning.
Even though we have participated in various competitions beforehand, this was the first time we applied this method and took it to the next level. So much so that on the first design stages we began feeling lost with the complex requirements needed, which were going to be a problem all the way through, but while chatting between us during lunch and complaining about how we hit a bump on the road we started to think that everyone else, principally the builders and clients, will as well and with that we were thinking about complicated elements with simple assemblages and came across a LEGO set which inspired us to create a form with smaller pieces which intertwine with each other creating a whole, through a series of instructions and design considerations which will help guide, us on the design process and the builders when the project would be solidified.
Taking complicated design decisions and condensing them down into simple assemblies that would still work even if the lot and size changes bringing new compositions into reality which we haven’t thought about but made them through the backlog of instructions we put forward
Design
For the designing process, we’ll have to admit that it was a challenge in a certain way, due to the fact that we were forced to work using a hybrid meeting system, alternating between face-to-face meetings and different virtual tools that allowed us to collaborate as a team, such as Zoom, among others.
The whole process started by gathering all of the information we could get about the main facts that were to be taken into consideration during the designing process of an educational institution that follows “Enko’s” method of learning, in the other hand we had to analyze and study the main aspects that influence the site where the school was planned to be placed.
For this part of the process, we proceeded to make an investigation starting in the macro (the city) all the way to the micro which is the lot.
Then we studied what’s called the ‘school typology’ taking into consideration the information we received from the competition brief and from the gathering of information from some other architecture books.
After we had gathered all of this information, we organized it for a better understanding during the next steps of the process, we then proceeded to schedule the one, that for some force majeure reasons, was the last face to face meeting; where we proposed our different individual ideas, concepts and drawings in order to make some alternatives of what we call the mass plan using and combining the ideas that we all presented into a cohesive architectural design.
After this we had to adapt ourselves to the virtual tools that we had at our disposal, at first, we faced a few complications, not only because of the physical distance of the team, but also for the meeting availability due to the time zones we were located in. In order to overcome this difficulties we carried on to schedule the meetings, taking into consideration the availability of each member, also we had to do some ‘homework’ so we could deal with different topics and problems with which we were then able to discuss them step by step during the meetings were we talked, drew and tested new ideas that would come up and every time we did this we had in mind the competition rules and instructions so we wouldn’t propose something that was not relevant or allowed, and so, this became an interesting cycle where we would move forward by always going back to the beginning to make sure everything is following the same idea and then repeating it until it was done; this was elaborated this way so we could stay focused on the goal, which was to solve the project in a way that gave the students and the people, who would interact with it, the best possible addition to their urban fabric and life experience.
The design process isn’t a rectilinear journey, it has new information that adapts better into the project, and you have to be open to make changes. Like in every design challenge we had problems, not only when the creativity grows stale, but getting into our own heads and not being able to look further because we have seen our same design and same sketches hundreds of times. This where we took our next step of our process which was to hold some ‘pear reviews’ where we asked a group of our friends and colleagues to criticize and give a fresh set of eyes in a quick ‘elevator pitch’ of each of our options which helped us set in motion a different outlook on what we have been thinking and how that was being transmitted to people that were not familiar to the project.
From then on it became a turning point of our project, to consider it from other people’s perspectives, specifically from, not only the students but the pedestrians as well. This started many discussions between the team because one thing that was really important for us was to make as least impactful as possible towards the streets and make it more human centric, but with the scale of the project and that area it was something that had to be tested out multiple times before getting, what for us was, the best design iterations.
A very important thing to take into consideration is that the first idea is not always going to be the better idea, we think that we should always have to think about different options, paths and ideas which you have to make comparisons between them and you have to discuss and analyze the good aspects and the bad ones so you can choose the right option, the one that fills the most important needs of the project, this ideas will manifest in any part of the designing process, so it is important to draw them in a piece of sketch, put it in 3D, etc., so you can analyze it and decide whether it is going to be beneficial for the project or not.
Furthermore, we felt it was important to generate, in a project which was going to be replicated and would change according to our instruction manual, a sense of identity that would start with the architecture form, a non-complicated shape with complicated design decisions that was accompanied with a ‘logo’ of the principal characteristics of the overall volume which you could easily remember, even if not the whole project, but those defining features of the building.
Finally, when we already had an architectural proposal completely clear we decided to split the manufacturing tasks of every architectural plan, assembly and material details, renderings and the reference budget, which led us to the final meeting where we organized all of the information and plans we had, so we could make some banner alternatives and then choose which one was the most suitable for our whole proposal, in the end, after a long discussion we came up with the final banner proposals which were the ones we submitted to the competition site. We were only able to do this due to the complete trust in each other’s abilities and skills to complete the project in a certain way we all agreed upon making it a cohesive style which mainly speaks towards the fact that we are not only colleagues but friends who know each other and can easily acknowledge the final feel we want the drawings to have, of peace, knowledge and understanding education as the stepping stone to a life with more opportunities.
Conclusion
An Architectural competition is an experience that gives you the opportunity to explore your creativity, but it’s restricted by certain parameters which are necessary for the project’s development. Here you can explore your skills and try out new knowledge while getting closer to the real world and its problems through architecture. This is an opportunity where despite some issues that may appear in the process, you should be thankful to always have a team where you can compare ideas and solve any problem through their different understandings and knowledge.
Final tips
- Use the brief as an opportunity of design
- Ask a set of new eyes for criticism on your initial ideas
- If you’re in a team, design together and always talk about new ideas
- Make it as easy as possible for the jury to understand
- Maintain a concise idea that encompasses the whole project
- Every design idea must make the overall concept stronger
- Generate an identity
- Take advantage of the technology you have in hand
- When designing, think of what perspectives you want to show that best exemplify your idea
- Find your own design method that works well with the abilities of your team
1st win
For us, this was our first win. When they announced the winner, we couldn’t believe it. We were on the phone while refreshing the website over and over just in case, but when we were finally completely sure it wasn’t a dream, we felt proud of what we had accomplished due to the fact that this was a final compilation of the experience we developed over years of competing. We finally found a project that we thought could truly make a difference but that took a lot of failures on the way which leads us to the final thing we learned which is to trust in yourself, on your team and enjoy the process.
Authors: Bryan Velastegui Cordova, José Chavez, Nicholas Dorfflinger
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