Announcing the Design It Shelter Competition

We teamed up with the folks at the Guggenheim Museum to create a design competition that's open to people everywhere. Design It: Shelter Competition challenges participants to create a simple shelter for a specific geographic location anywhere in the world. Entries are 3D models designed in Google SketchUp, geo-located in Google Earth and uploaded to theGoogle 3D Warehouse.

Visitors to the competition website are able to view images, animations and descriptions of entries all in one place. With the help of the Google Earth plug-in, the 3D models themselves are visible right on the page. For the first time, you won't need to download a model to be able to see it "in the round".

The inspiration for 'Design It' comes from Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic assignment for the apprentices at Taliesin, his architecture school in Arizona and Wisconsin. Students design and physically construct shelters – small, simple buildings – as part of their studies. Then they live in them.

This competition coincides with the Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward exhibition currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Also on display is Learning By Doing, which focuses specifically on the student-built shelters at Taliesin. If you're in the area, be sure to check them out.

Submission

To enter the competition, you need to fill out the submission form on the Guggenheim website. You must provide:

• information about yourself (name, email, country, etc)
• a description of your shelter
• a link to your SketchUp model on the Google 3D Warehouse
• at least one, and as many as four, JPEG images of your shelter
• a link to a video of your shelter on YouTube (this is optional, but highly encouraged)

Program

Competition entries should:

• provide a place for someone to study and sleep
• be sited anywhere on Earth
• have no more than 100 square feet (9.3 square meters) of enclosed space
• be no taller than 12 feet (3.6 meters) high
• not include water, gas or electricity

Timing

The competition starts today, June 8th – Frank Lloyd Wright's 142nd birthday. The deadline for submissions is August 23rd of this year. Two prizes will be awarded: the People's Prize, decided by public vote, and the Juried prize, selected by the members of a panel of architecture and design experts. Public voting for the winner of the People's Prize runs from September 7th to October 10th, and winners will be announced October 21st – the 50th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum.

Judging

The judges will consider entries in light of five major criteria:

• The relationship of the shelter to the built or natural environment around it
• Innovative design
• Thoughtful use of materials
• Adherence to the project specifications
• Quality of the SketchUp model

Prizes

Two prizes will be awarded:

The People's Prize: Current students from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture will select ten shelters from among all of the entries. The public will choose one of these ten to receive the People's Prize by voting on the competition website.

The Juried Prize: A panel of architecture and design experts will choose the winner of the Juried Prize from among all competition entries.

Both prizes include:

• airfare and two nights' accommodation for two in New York City
• behind-the-scenes tours of both the Guggenheim Museum and the Google office in NYC
• complimentary admission to selected NYC museums
• a Google SketchUp Pro 7 license

The winner of the Juried Prize will also receive USD$1000.

Questions? Check out the competition FAQ. Good luck, and have fun.

This video talks about what you need to do to get started:

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