The Chicago Architectural Club is pleased to announce the 2010 Chicago Prize Competition: MINE THE GAP, a single-stage international design ideas competition dedicated to examining one of the most visible scars left after the collapse of the real estate market in Chicago: the massive hole along the Lake Michigan shore that was to have been—and may yet be—the foundation for a singular 150-story condominium tower designed by an internationally-renowned Spanish architect, a tower which was to have become a new icon for the city and region. What to do with the gap? Whether or not the project is resuscitated, what else can we do with this strategic and highly-charged site? Once the motor of real-estate speculation has stalled, what can we use to propel ourselves, and the discipline, forward? ObjectiveThis competition is, in part, about looking for new ways to construct both the city and the programs within it. If real-estate speculation is no longer the driving force, what new techniques and actors can fill this space?

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You are invited to participate in an open competition to provide the cover art for the re-publication of the widely-praised literary novel, The Unfastened Heart. The winner of this contest will be awarded The Icon Prize, and will receive $1500 in award money, with his or her artwork to be featured on the cover of the new edition of the novel. This competition is being organized to support and nurture the work and careers of other artists who gather together around a common literary work. IntroductionReviewers have called The Unfastened Heart “Magical!” (Cosmopolitan), “Evocative,” (Boston Globe), “Tender and compassionate . . . takes us deep into an enchanted — and enchanting — world.” (New York Times Book Review) The work is a testament to the haven of true friendship, the marvel of forgiveness, the wonder to be found within beginning again.

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