Presented by AECOM and Van Alen Institute, with 100 Resilient Cities — pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, hOUR City is this year’s Urban SOS™ student ideas competition. The organizers are asking students to propose new solutions to tackle housing, transportation, or economic development challenges and to re-imagine what a future “hour city” boundary can be. A total of $15,000 in prize money will be distributed among the finalist teams, and the winning team will receive up to $25,000 of in-kind support from AECOM to implement a pilot of their proposal.

Read more about Urban SOS: hOUR City – Global Student Competition on Contest Watchers.

NYC Department of Transportation, Chinatown Partnership, and Van Alen Institute are accepting proposals for the “Gateways to Chinatown” project. The overarching goal of the Project is to provide a new landmark for Chinatown and the surrounding neighborhoods that will engender pride of place, embody cultural and social identities, and stimulate economic development. The winning team, which will be selected later this year, will have a $900,000 budget to design and implement their proposal, and will begin working with the community in early 2018.

Read more about Gateways to Chinatown – Request for Proposals on Contest Watchers.

New York-based Van Alen Institute invites you to submit to Opportunity Space: an international design-build competition. The challenge is to create a temporary physical structure that will house programs to foster economic opportunity and social inclusion in Malmö, Sweden. The winning team will receive a $10,000 prize, a $5,000 travel budget, and up to $25,000 to implement their proposal in and around Malmö’s Enskifteshagen Park.

Read more about Opportunity Space – Van Alen Institute’s Design Competition on Contest Watchers.

Van Alen Institute and West Palm Beach launched Shore to Core, a design and research competition to re-imagine the West Palm Beach downtown and understand how cities impact well-being. West Palm Beach is a young city that is growing quickly. Many associate this region with a large retirement community, but there is also a growing population of people in their 20s and 30s, as well as large Black and Hispanic populations. In the design competition, two finalist teams will be selected to participate in a 3-month design process and receive $45,000 to develop their work. The research team will receive $40,000 to develop their work, $10,000 to implement their pilot study.

Read more about Shore to Core – Design and Research Competition on Contest Watchers.

Van Alen Institute and AECOM have just launched Fair Share, the 2016 Urban SOS global student competition. The organizers are inviting multidisciplinary teams from around the world to apply the tools and principles of the “sharing economy” to tackle pressing urban challenges. Expert juries of global thought leaders in five cities around the world will select competition finalists. The winning team will receive US $7,500 and up to US $25,000 of in-kind support from AECOM to bring their project to life.

Read more about Urban SOS 2016: Fair Share – Global Student Competition on Contest Watchers.

The National Park Service (NPS) and National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), in collaboration with Van Alen Institute, launched Memorials for the Future, a competition that aims to rethink the way we develop and experience memorials. Announced by the White House in October 2015 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Challenge.gov, Memorials for the Future will re-imagine Washington, D.C.’s traditional approach to permanent commemoration. Memorials enshrine what we as a society want to remember. But the places, people and stories that we choose to memorialize and the audiences who encounter them are constantly changing. Memorials for the Future challenges entrants to imagine the possible future of memorials: How can they look forward and not only back? How can we commemorate in more adaptive, interactive, and ephemeral ways?

Read more about Memorials for the Future – Ideas Competition on Contest Watchers.

Urban SOS: All Systems Go – the 2015 AECOM’s global competition, calls on multidisciplinary teams of students to envision more resilient food, water, and energy systems for supplying cities and regions today and in the future. All Systems Go is the 6th student competition in AECOM’s Urban SOS program, created to engage students in urban planning and design, architecture, landscape architecture, economics, environmental studies, and engineering with the issues confronting modern cities and allowing them to propose solutions that, if worthy, will be seen by established professionals. Three short-listed teams will be invited to present their proposals before an interdisciplinary panel at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles in October 2015. Urban SOS: All Systems Go jurors will award US$15,000 in prizes, which may be divided among one or more teams. In addition, AECOM will make available up to US$25,000 of cash and in-kind staff time to support the implementation of a prototype of the winning team’s strategies.

Read more about Urban SOS 2015: AECOM’s Global Student Competition on Contest Watchers.

Van Alen Institute and the US National Park Service have just launched National Parks Now, a competition inviting multidisciplinary teams of young professionals to develop strategies for reshaping the national parks visitor experience at four National Parks in the Northeast. Four teams – one for each park site – will be selected in November 2014 to receive $15,000 participate in a six-month research and design process to develop new narratives and communication tools, interpretive installations, outreach strategies, and other tools to connect the four parks to larger, more diverse audiences throughout the region, and create a model for similar parks nationwide. The teams will be competing for $10,000 to prototype one of their strategies, which will be implemented at their site in summer of 2015. The four sites are:

Read more about National Parks Now Multidisciplinary Competition on Contest Watchers.

Van Alen Institute is pleased to introduce the international competition Future Ground and is accepting submissions for innovative strategies for vacant land reuse in New Orleans. Future Ground is a design competition inviting multidisciplinary teams – landscape design, architecture, planning, public policy, and other related fields – to generate flexible design and policy strategies to reuse vacant land in New Orleans, transforming abandoned landscapes into resources for the current and future city. The project will produce implementable, replicable solutions that NORA: The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority can apply to specific sites citywide, and can help catalyze change in cities around the world.

Read more about Future Ground Multidisciplinary Design Competition on Contest Watchers.

Van Alen Institute is pleased to announce the launch of Ground/Work, an international architecture competition seeking innovative designs for a new street-level venue to house the Institute’s work space and public programs. Since 1982, the Institute has occupied the sixth floor of its building at 30 West 22nd Street in Manhattan, where a diverse program of competitions, curatorial initiatives, and public events has made Van Alen an influential center for design innovation. This year, the Institute is making its public-oriented mission central to the reinvention of its own office and event space, transforming the ground floor and lower level of its building to house its entire organization. Ground/Work invites emerging designers, up to ten years out of school, to propose bold visions for a light and highly flexible ground-floor space that is visible, accessible, and participatory in public life, with a strong connection to the street and the city at large.

Read more about Ground/Work – Van Alen Institute’s Design Competition on Contest Watchers.