Sustainable Building Competition – 4th Edition

The choice of programme of the competition is based on the following question: “To reduce urban sprawl, how can we densify housing while preserving what existing buildings, encouraging architectural, social and programmatic diversity and building sustainably?”

OBJECTIVES

Propose to restructure an existing collective residential building by significantly improving the comfort of its residents, in particular by working on its thermal performance and by creating additional private or common spaces through the following processes:

• elevation
• lateral extension
• hollowing out all or part of certain floors
• working on the nature of the envelope materials and on the openings

CHALLANGES

In this context, the main challenges and expectations are:

• Quality of architecture in the specific context of urban integration.
• Concrete and measurable elements demonstrating the sustainability of the project

SCOPE

The site is not pre-defined. Candidates will look for an existing building in the city and country of their choice, consisting mainly of collective housing units, whose design allows for an extension (vertical or horizontal) and therefore a realistic addition of living surface area.

The building must have sufficient structural characteristics to allow this extension. Accurate full-scale measurements of usable surfaces must be taken on site or collected by the candidates in order to give a comprehensive presentation of the existing surface areas prior to extension.

Direct enquiries will be conducted locally to ascertain urban planning regulations and regulatory constraints applicable to the construction area (materials and colours, maximum heights, fire protection, access, shapes of volumes added and slope of roofs…). These regulations and constraints must be taken into account when designing the project.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

The responses of the candidates will be evaluated according to:

• Adequacy of site selection with the programme
• Quality of architecture in the specific area of urban integration
• Enhancement of the use of zinc in the enveloppe
• The environmental quality of the response:
• Ecology
• Energy and maintenance
• Water management
• Materials
• Comfort of occupants
• Transport and societal issues
• The quality of the expression and presentation of the items making up the file

PRIZES

VMZINC provides an overall amount of 5,000 € in prize money, leaving it up to jury members to divide this sum fairly among the winning teams (if several winners are designated).

Go to the competition’s website