SHIFT: Infrastructure

This competition will focus on issues that surround emerging infrastructure, and provide an opportunity to re-think our approach to confronting their many challenges.

Category Idea Competition / Open to Students
Type International, Idea, Students, Single-Stage, Anonymous
Genre Essay, Urban
Country United States
RegDeadline 1 June 2010 GoogleCal iCal
1 June 2010 (via Online)
Eligibility Current students of an accredited university or work that was completed as a student at an accredited university within 2 years of the entry date

Description
Initiatives such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into U.S. infrastructure improvements but these funds are being directed largely towards "shovel-ready" improvements to antiquated infrastructure systems. Some of these improvements are indeed necessary, but they are merely short-term solutions. A SHIFT towards a new, integrated approach to infrastructure design and management is imperative. How this needed paradigm shift occurs will depend on creative decision-making and powerful collective efforts led by designers, planners, and communities at every level. This emerging framework of infrastructure must prioritize the quality and health of human experience while operating symbiotically within its ecological context. Rather than adhering to the rigid and deterministic models of the past, this new model must become a reflexive process that adapts temporally and spatially across diverse contexts and scales.
The inaugural issue, SHIFT: Infrastructure will focus on issues that surround emerging infrastructure, and provide an opportunity to re-think our approach to confronting their many challenges. Our aim is to broaden the traditional notion of infrastructure to include areas such as culture, ecology, and economy, and incorporate differing levels of time, context, and scale; from rural to urban, from local to global, from immediate to imagined. How can the evolution of infrastructure be managed to maximize human and environmental health? How can integrated design approaches develop synergies among infrastructural systems that promote social equity, ecological resiliency, and economic prosperity?

Jury
Kristina Hill (PH.D., University of Virginia)
Jeff Hou (University of Washington)
Mark W. Johnson (FASLA)
Walter Kulash (PE)
William Wenk (FASLA)

Prize
Publication

Entry Fee
$15

Entries
The document (a maximum of 3000 words)

Timetable
Publish date: October 1, 2010

Organizer
SHIFT:

Official Website
http://design-dev.ncsu.edu/openjournal/index.php/shift/pages/view/call