Urbanscape: Symbiosis

Furniture that tell tales

Worldwide

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OVERVIEW

Futurescapes

As our future mega-cities are defining themselves every day with bustling streets and soaring skyscrapers, a city still craves for many things but mostly - an identity.

The 21st century from its onset is rapidly changing how we live and how we perceive the definitions of a city rampantly. ‘Urbanscape’ is the manifestation of the built environment of cities. It not only refers to the configuration of built forms but also the elements that define interstitial spaces. However, what we see today is the progression of ever-increasing skyscrapers that dominate the memories of a city, overpowering smaller elements. The built mass may define the image of the city, but public life defines its inner workings.

Urbanscape: Symbiosis competition is an endeavour to turn the tables on how urban furniture works in cities. From changing them to a mass-produced piece of utility to a more thoughtful in terms of their presence.

To root them more on originality and utility, building a symbiotic relationship between the elemental and the whole.

Challenge to design furniture

Urbanscape: Symbiosis is a step forward that seeks to bind the concept of urban identity and the furniture that speak for the city. It aims at creating elements that connect the dots to reveal the identity of a city.

The challenge here is creating a family of furniture for the desired city with common features in concept/form/colour/design that needs to be derived from the city into consideration.

The location of these pieces of furniture also matters, by analyzing key spots where they could be meaningful to the city as well. The goal of this competition is to give birth to furniture concepts that sprout from the city’s identity instead of industrial convenience. This would be possible in the following three steps.

Symbiosis

1. Choose a city/own city:

The selected place should be in an urban condition. The city selected should preferably be Your city, where you live or really acquainted with in terms of its work and qualities. You can also choose a city which you always wanted to design for but to understand the energy of the city, experience is always more helpful. The entry should draw out hidden/surprising/obvious facets of the city from where it can truly channelize it's potential/problems/needs to the next step.

2. Create the furniture:

The furniture pieces created, can be chosen from a broad category of street furniture categories on the next page. These can be chosen by the preferences of the designer or its affinity/use/compatibility to the city. There is no additional merit associated with the kind of choice of the categories but the design input of the participant and its merging from step one. You can use hybrid categories that may solve crucial spots of the city and at the same time define its image at large.

3. Establish symbiosis

Use the physical images/sketches/plan of the parts of the city to place the design furniture within them and demonstrate the symbiosis. This can happen through either self-photographed or photographs sourced or drawn or sketched, but the key here is to demonstrate a new flow of furniture design that can be brought into the city. The individual furniture may be slightly modified based on the places they are placed on but the overall symbiosis or sequence of memory or the narrative is relevant.

The Family

A. Life: Table, Benches, Seating, etc.

B. Lights: Street Lights, Traffic Lights, Park lights, etc.

C. Utility Table, Benches, Seating, etc: Post Box, Telephone Booths, Fire Hydrants, etc.

D. Signage: Street sign, Traffic sign, Poster poles, Billboards, etc.

E. Waste Management: Dustbins, Litter bins, Trash cans, Spit box, etc

F. Landscape: Planters, Park-let, Green strips, etc

G. Transportation: Bus stop, Bicycle racks, Vehicle Shed, etc

H. Play: Slides, Playing setups, Swings, Fitness, etc.

I. Others / City Specific / Hybrid: A combination of the above or urban furniture specific to your city.

Objective: Create a tangible link between urban and elemental. Participants have to design any 4 different furniture pieces in the following typology. They can be combinable, but they should be useful/meaningful in isolation as well.

One working piece of furniture that fits more than a single typology will be placed in the I. Hybrid category.

Typology A is mandatory, and the other 3 can be chosen separately.

Specifics

The following criterion should be kept in mind while designing/presenting the furniture:

1. The furniture should reflect the culture - vibrancy - uniqueness of the city

2. It should follow modularity to make replicability of the furniture easier.

3. It should be functional and serviceable. 4. It should correspond to the urban context.

5. It should be comprehensive and not limited to the preference of a particular age group.

6. Innovation, in terms of material exploration, use of technology and fabrication methodology.

Judging Criteria

The entries will be judged by an international jury of the competition on the following criteria:

Responsibility

+ Production efficiency

+ Social responsibility

+ Contextual design

+ Exploration of New Materials

+ Exploring locally available materials

Creativity

+ Degree of innovation

+ Degree of elaboration

+ Uniqueness of Presentation

Functionality

+ Night time and day time compatibility

+ Ergonomics

+ Practicality

Aesthetics

+ Aesthetic appeal

+ Emotional appeal

+ Spatial concept

+ Visual Identity

Symbiosis

+ A strong link between the design & the city

+ Sequentiality of Symbiosis

+ Relation between the furniture pieces

The judging panel can also add other criteria based on their internal discussions - which will be in line with the problem statement. Participants are advised to fulfil above given criteria first in their design. Names of the jury panel will be announced soon.

The decision of the Judges Panel is final, no appeals will be entertained and no further correspondence shall be entered into.

Please note that the jury scores are NOT affected by the number of likes on a project. Every submission is evaluated based on the judging criteria. However, ‘Likes’ play a role in determining the People’s Choice Awards.

Voting Rules

People's Choice Award is applicable to all the participants.
The People's choice award will be given on the basis of a project (in either student or professional category as per the award list) with the most number of authentic likes.
You can begin receiving likes on the project as soon as you upload your entry (even before the submission deadlines).
You can share your project on social media/messaging platforms apart from UNI as well as soon as you upload the project. You do not have to wait for the results.
The voting will close as per the date mentioned in the schedule of the competition page. Any likes coming after this date/time will be not counted in the final calculation.
Creating fraudulent/fake/bot/impersonating accounts to increase public votes will be considered an unfair means and may lead to disqualification with a notice. \