WINNERS OF THE 2015 FAIRY TALES COMPETITION

With over 1,200 participants from 65 countries around the world, the Fairy Tales competition has cemented itself as the largest ideas competition in the industry.

“The stunning quality of the entries testify that architects and designers are eager to think outside the box of traditional formats and expectations, and do so with spectacular results,” say Blank Space founders Matthew Hoffman and Francesca Giuliani. “The tenacity and imagination that each team infused into their entry was beyond our wildest dreams. The incredible success of Fairy Tales is helping chart a new course for architecture by uncovering new ways of engaging with it and speaking to a wide audience.”

The jury selected the 1st and 2nd place winners, along with a tie for 3rd place:

• First Place goes to “Empty” by Zigeng Wang. Rich, detailed images of a post-industrial world illustrate an hyperrealistic, sci-fi-esque story about the great ethical and environmental dilemmas associated with globalization.

“This project describes an unsustainable ecology in the backdrop of globalization, mocking the vicious cycle of modernization under totalitarianism. The ultimate purpose of it is to uncover the contradictions and tensions in the geographic landscape of capitalist activity, the questioning of globalization and the predicament of human beings. The “future” seems like a distant notion to us as a society - but the fact is that it is happening right now. In EMPTY, I sought to create a near-future fairy tale that combines geopolitical forces, technology and unchecked ambitions into an architectural vision.”

• Second Place is awarded to “Beautifully Banal” by Alexander Culler and Danny Travis. A delightful style exercise, this story leverages CAD drawings to illustrate a mundane scenario in spectacular fashion: a fly is trapped inside an office building.

“Our approach to the project was to produce an alternate reading of the “everyday”, to showcase how through the correct lens of thinking even the most banal of environments can become a fairy tale. This was achieved through the rigorous pairings of strictly conventional architectural drawing techniques with whimsical cartoon-styled collage.”

• Third Place: a tie between “Screenland, By A Pixel” by Samantha Lee and Zhan Wang; and “CTRL C - CTRL ME” by Pauline Marcombe, Helene Marcombe, and Jay Robinson. In “Screenland, By A Pixel”, whimsical elaborations of a pixel, the atom of contemporary architecture creation, accompany a riff of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s “Flatland”. “CTRL C - CTRL ME” illustrates by way of metaphor what happens in the passage from inspiration to regulation. Colorful drawings narrate the story of a shrinking architect, becoming smaller and smaller under the pressure of technology and business rules.

Samantha Lee and Zhan Wang - “Screenland, By A Pixel”
“We wanted to tell a story about a micro landscape that is so alien, yet one that we stare into for the majority of our waking life. The screen acts as the boundary between our virtual world and greasy fingers, but we hardly pay attention to its actual physicality. Zooming out from the deepest world inside our screens to the recognizable digital interface of a mobile device, our project reveals this extraordinary landscape at different resolutions.”

Pauline Marcombe, Helene Marcombe and Jay Robinson - “CTRL C - CTRL ME"
“This competition has been a wonderful (and funny) opportunity for the three of us to work together. It was a very playful experience that occurred in many places: at a rectangular table in Aurillac, in a grey park in London, in a cold kitchen in Jerusalem and finally in front of a computer (of course.)”

The jury also awarded 11 honorable mentions:

• “What About Sleeping Beauty” by Hugo Reichmann
• “The Doomers' Ball” by STASUS - James A. Craig & Matt Ozga-Lawn
• “How You Can Rhino the Jingo Out of Everything & Architecture Gets More Than A Skin” by J P Maruszczak, Roger Connah, and Ryan Manning
• “The Invisible Apple” by Zigeng Wang and Tanli Liu
• “The Museum of Lost Volumes” by Neyran Turan, Melis Ugurlu, and Anastasia Yee
• “Verse” by Chanel Dehond
• “The Death Rehearsal” by Carol Nung
• “Allegories of Home” by Zabie Mustafa and Neda Kakhsaz
• “Despina: The City & Desire” by Víctor Díaz, Alberto Costa, Carlos Piñar, Rafael Velázquez, and Monserrat León
• “The City Spoke” by Adam Longenbach
• “Sukkar” by Nenad Krstic, Ivana Radmanovac, and Iva Bekic

Winners of the competition were selected by some of the most influential authorities in architecture, design, art, and storytelling. The jury included: Anish Kapoor, Sculptor; Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the MoMA; Juergen Mayer, Principal at J Mayer H Architects; Jaime Derringer, Founder of Design Milk; Andy Hunter, Co-Founder of Electric Literature; Karim Rashid, Designer; Yves Behar, CEO of Fuseproject; John Hoke, VP of Global Design at Nike; Shohei Shigematsu, Partner at OMA; Hunter Tura, CEO of Bruce Mau Design; Matthew Hoffman and Francesca Giuliani, Co-Founders of Blank Space.

“The speculative has long been a mode that has fueled architectural creativity, as a way to model utopia, dystopia, and everything in between. So many of the entries provocatively and compellingly created imaginary realms through the stories they told both visually and textually,” says Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). “It was a pleasure to explore the many different worlds presented by the competition designs.”

The winning entries, along with the honorable mentions and other notable submissions, will be featured in Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells a Story Volume 2. The anthology will give readers the opportunity to experience first hand what happens when creatives tell a story. The book is designed by Bruce Mau Design, with a special cover by Spanish artist Vicente Garcia-Morillo. The book will ship in June, and copies are available for pre-order at a discounted price of $14 here: www.blankspaceproject.com/book

QUOTES FROM JURY MEMBERS.-

JAIME DERRINGER, Founder, Design Milk
“It was very difficult to choose a winner from so many amazing entries. From inner struggles to fighting against external forces, the entries demonstrated that our imagination and appetite for architecture reaches far beyond what we’ve been able to achieve thus far. Judging this competition was like reading a treasured collection of fairy tales filled with magic, mystery and architecture - what more could you ask for?”

JUERGEN MAYER, Principal, J Mayer H Architects
“Fairy tales are a unique topic for architects. Each entrant brought their own unique variations on the theme that were obviously influenced by their cultural background. It is a wonderfully challenging medium for designers of architectural space - one that creates an inclusive conversation about the role of architecture from its multitude of influences, characters, ideas, and experiences.”