winners of the 2018 laka competition 'architecture that reacts' revealed

the 2018 laka competition gathered over 130 entries prepared by 200 participants from more than 30 countries, responding to the topic of ‘architecture that reacts.’ seeking innovative ideas that go beyond typical building solutions, this year’s projects featured architectural, design, or technological solutions capable of dynamic interaction with their surroundings.

1st prize: tidal terrains by mary denman (architect/designer) / USA

the 1st prize of the 2018 laka competition has been awarded to mary denman whose project, tidal terrains, addresses climate change, the rise of sea levels, and our outlook on urban water as a place of opportunity. the US-based architect/designer has chosen london’s thames river as the site of her project, whose relationship with the people has drastically decreased from the 1950s onward due to widespread outbreaks of cholera.

‘the proposal incorporates programs such as swimming, the agricultural farming of algae, restaurants and boulevards into a floating park typology which embraces water and encourages access to make it once again a sociable, livable part of the city,’ notes denman in her description. ‘within these programs, the landscape integrates a cycle in which algae, wastewater and atmospheric co2 is converted to energy, food products and clean water. as such, this means that the dirty water of the thames river becomes an asset to produce energy, rather than a commodity to be expensively processed.’

2nd prize: embodied homeostasis by david stieler (architect) / austria

austrian architect david stieler won the second prize with embodied homeostasis, a project that challenges the notion of human hegemony on design. his proposal offers a morphogenetic strategy to create spaces by human interaction and its techno digital co-habitants, with a machine that works to describe processes of spatial organization that are structurally determined, but not formally.

‘today, we live in a world of ubiquitous computation. advancements in information technology and sensing objects have fundamentally disrupted the way not only digital space is perceived, but also altered the way social interaction is organized in our built environment,’ explains stieler. ‘in this case the design of the machine itself was very specific, the formal architectural outcome on the macro level nevertheless was open. we also put forward the idea of animate matter, within the classical idea of architecture the ground is reserved for action and the elevation for perception. by perceiving matter as a fluid component within an ongoing design procedure this understanding is reversed. there is no longer a distinction between form and deformation. the focus shifts from making meaning to making sense, and even more towards dealing with senses. within this interspecific and reactive design procedure lies a very sensous and bodily quality for each participant within the process of networked matter.’

3rd prize: the platform of motion by nusrat jahan mim (graduate student of architecture) / USA and arman salemi (graduate student of architecture) / USA

graduate students of architecture nusrat jahan mim and arman salemi have won the 3rd prize with the platform of motion, a speculative design for the amazon distribution center at brooklyn (3rd st 3rd ave) in new york. the two have envisioned a future where human moments will not be replaced by the fastness of machines, and thus have designed a platform where fast automated movements (p-bots) of the distribution center meet slow activities of an informal market (im pods), get interrupted, and ultimately slow down.

‘this is an architectural experimentation of looking at the future of amazon’s logistics center as an urban interface right at the moment when amazon has the initiative to buy the whole foods market and is planning to step in the online grocery services,’ the duo points out. ‘to keep pace with the demands of “quick online deliveries”, physical spaces of existing logistics centers are being re-designed. these are ensuring more speed by reducing probable slowness in the entire system. logistics centers are being fully automated, less human, more robots, more efficiency. hence, when this super-fast automated version of logistic center merges with the “super slow” grocery stores, and the commercial objective is to reduce the allocated time per individual order placed online, we are definitely going to lose “slow human moments” in the overall system.’

‘our objective was not to design a 100% efficient distribution center. rather we followed a critical design approach to develop a system, where fast and slow movements can co-exist and directly impact each other in a spatio-temporal framework. this project stands right at that point where real world and the digital world start to get intertwined.’

for more details on the winning projects, special recognitions, and honorable mentions head to the laka competition page here.

special recognition: surftopia by eduardo camarena estébanez (architect, product designer) / UK, and maría urigoitia villanueva (architect) / USA

special recognition: platinum city by sean thomas allen (architectural assistant) / UK

special recognition: volcano lite by patorn sangruchi (student of architecture) / USA