Modern Collective Living Challenge

The Modern Collective Living Challenge is part of the Bee Breeders Global Housing Crisis competition series. For this architecture competition, participants are tasked with envisioning new forms of accessible housing for relocated farmers in rural China.

The unprecedented scale of China’s urbanization has lead to millions of people from rural locations being moved to more urbanized areas. There are many reasons why farmers are relocated from their farmlands including: planned area development that is triggered by city growth, infrastructure development, pollution, or economic pressure for the farmers to look for better living opportunities.

Relocating is often met with many challenges, one of which is the change in the collective effort lifestyle. This means that it is often difficult for older generations to adapt when they have been removed from small, family-like communities into often hostile, urban areas.

With this competition, participants are tasked to envision a housing solution for these relocated farmers; creating modern housing for small communities, in which individuals would not be forced into changing their collective way of living.

As no specific site has been selected for this competition, successful project designs will need to be versatile enough to be replicated in various rural locations all across China, with the potential to be adopted the standard practice for addressing this common problem.

Competition is open to all. No professional qualification is required. Design proposals can be developed individually or by teams (4 team members maximum).

PRIZES:

3 winning proposals, 2 special awards and 6 honourable mentions will be selected. Bee Breeders will award a total of US $6,000 in prize money to competition winners as follows:

1st Prize – US $3,000
2nd Prize – US $1,500
3rd Prize – US $500

+ 6 honourable mentions

BB Student Award – US $500
BB Green Award – US $500

COMPETITION SCHEDULE

Early Bird Registration: MAY 4 – MAY 31
Advance Registration: JUNE 1 – JULY 21
Last Minute Registration: JULY 22 – SEPTEMBER 20

Closing date for registration: SEPTEMBER 20, 2017
Closing date for submission: OCTOBER 18, 2017 (11:59 pm GMT)

Announcement of the winners: NOVEMBER 2, 2017