April 28, 2010 – Rockville, MD

The 2009 BrickStainable Competition was a great inaugural competition in pursuit of design solutions that exploit the unique properties of brick masonry construction as well as seeking new ideas in the development of this age old building material.

Once again, this year’s competition has two categories which we hope will appeal to various departments within your school. We want to share this announcement so faculty may consider the possibility of incorporating this competition into the design curriculum. We have modified the schedule to better coincide with the academic calendar. We look forward to releasing the final competition parameters toward the end of June 2010 with final submissions due December 15, 2010. The following is a general description of the next competition as it is currently shaping up.

 

Building Design Competition:
This year the project will be more urban and the criteria more specific. Like last year, the competition seeks integrative design solutions that exploit the thermal qualities of brick masonry construction to create a passively heated and cooled building. Our target: Net Zero. We seek evidence of the project’s performance and encourage the use of BIM, energy, solar and day light modeling software. We encourage interdisciplinary teams to maximize the design team’s understanding of and contribution to the project’s performance.  We encourage participation by teams made up of architects, engineers, material scientists, landscape architects, ecologists and others.

Technical Design Competition:
We will be creating specific categories of entry for the Technical Awards. The organizers are finalizing those categories which will be released with the formal competition announcement in late June. We encourage participation in this category by product designers, material scientists, ecologists, engineering students from all departments, landscape architects, architects and others.

Awards: 
Last year, the jury withheld awarding a “Grand Prize” in each category, because no entries completely met all criteria of the competition. Potomac Valley Brick has decided to “roll-over” last year’s grand prize award money of $10,000 and $7,500, respectively, making an even larger prize package for the 2010 competition.

Jury:
The prestigious panel of jurors for the 2009 competition included Vivian Loftness, Carnegie Mellon architecture professor; Garth Rockcastle, dean and professor at the University of Maryland School of Architecture; Kara Johnson, IDEO practice lead and material scientist; and Martin Vachon, AXIM director of marketing. A number of esteemed candidates are being considered for the next competition.

Awards Celebration:
Six honorable mention award winning teams received $2,000 each and were flown to Washington, DC for the awards celebration which was held at the National Building Museum. The keynote speaker was Bill Browning, Founder of Terrapin Bright Green. At this point, the awards celebration for the next competition is tentatively scheduled for February or March of 2011 at the National Building Museum.

Please visit www.PVBrick.com to see the award winning entries, as well as videos from the competition, and photography from the awards celebration.