BRACKET [goes soft]

Result

Selected submissions announced. View entries...

Overview

We invites the submission of critical articles and unpublished design projects that investigate physical and virtual soft systems, as they pertain to infrastructure, ecologies, landscapes, environments, and networks.

Category Idea Competition / Competition Result
Type International, Essay, Idea, Open, Single-Stage, Onymous
Genre Essay
Country United States
RegDeadline 10 December 2010 GoogleCal iCal
10 December 2010 (via Online)
Eligibility All

Themes
Bracket 2 invites the submission of critical articles and unpublished design projects that investigate physical and virtual soft systems, as they pertain to infrastructure, ecologies, landscapes, environments, and networks. In an era of declared crises—economic, ecological and climatic amongst others– the notion of soft systems has gained increasing traction as a counterpoint to permanent, static and hard systems.
The notion of ‘soft’ systems had considerable impact on the design disciplines in the 1960s and 70s. In management, ‘Soft Systems Methodology’ was developed to address complex situations with divergent readings and stakeholders. The ability to deal with imprecision and uncertainty, with the aim of achieving more malleable, robust solutions is at the core of ‘Soft Computing’. Bridging disciplines, Nicholas Negroponte, in Soft Architecture Machines (1970), proposed a responsive built environment, wherein the computer acts as a tool for creativity and design, repositioning the role of the architect. Bracket 2 seeks to critically position and define soft systems, in order to expand the scope and potential for new spatial networks, and new formats of architecture, urbanization and nature. From soft politics, soft power and soft spaces to fluid territories, software and soft programming, Bracket 2 questions the use and role of responsive, indeterminate, flexible, and immaterial systems in design. Bracket 2 invites designers, architects, theorists, ecologists, scientists, and landscape architects to position and leverage the role of soft systems and recuperate the development of the soft project.

Jury
Neeraj Bhatia (Masters of Architecture + Urban Design)
Benjamin Bratton (a sociological, media, and design theorist)
Julia Czerniak (an Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University and the inaugural Director of UPSTATE)
Jeffrey Inaba (the Director of C-Lab, an architecture)
Geoff Manaugh (the author of BLDGBLOG (http://bldgblog.blogspot.com) and The BLDGBLOG Book (Chronicle Books, 2009), former senior editor of Dwell magazine and a contributing editor at Wired UK)
Philippe Rahm (guest professor at the Royal School of Architecture of Copenhaguen)
Charles Renfro (a practicing architect based in New York City)
Lola Sheppard (a partner at Lateral Office)

Prize
Publication

Entry Fee
None

Entries
- Article-based submissions in length from 2500 to 3500 words
- Project-based submission no longer than 500 words

Timetable
Jury Review and Selection: February 2011
Publication Submission of Selected Projects; March 2011
Publication date: Fall 2011

Links
Past winners

Organizer
[bracket]

Official Website
http://www.brkt.org/