This design competition—the third in the LA+ international series—asks whether we can live with animals in new ways, whether we can transcend the dualism of decimation on the one hand and protection on the other, and how we can use design to open our cities, our landscapes, and our minds to a more symbiotic existence with other creatures. 

BRIEF

The LA+ CREATURE design ideas competition asks entrants to do three things:

First, choose a nonhuman creature as your client (any species, any size, anywhere) and identify its needs (energy, shelter, procreation, movement, interaction, environment, etc.).

Second, design (or redesign) a place, structure, thing, system, and/or process that improves your client’s life.

Third, your design must, in some way, increase human awareness of and empathy towards your client’s existence.

For jury panel, submission requirements, competition conditions, and Q+A, see menu tabs above.

AWARDS

US $10,000 total prize money

5 winners to receive US$2,000, a certificate, and publication in the LA+ CREATURE issue.

10 honorable mentions to receive a certificate and publication in the LA+ CREATURE issue.

ENTRY PLATFORM OPENS

August 1, 2020

SUBMISSION DEADLINE

October 20, 2020 at 11.59 EDT (Philadelphia, USA time)

WINNERS ANNOUNCED

December 8, 2020 

WINNERS + SELECTED ENTRIES PUBLISHED

The LA+ CREATURE issue will be published in Fall 2021

SUGGESTED READINGS

Jennifer Wolch & Marcus Owens, “Animals in Contemporary Architecture and Design,” Humanimalia: a journal of human/animal interface studies 8, no. 2 (Spring 2017) 1–26.

Jennifer Wolch, “Zoopolis” in Jennifer Wolch & Jody Emel, Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands (Verso, 1998) 119–138.

Ursula Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

Timothy Morton, Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (Verso, 2017).

Richard Weller, Zuzanna Drozdz & Sara Padgett Kjaersgaard, “Hotspot Cities: Identifying Peri-Urban Conflict Zones in the World’s Biodiversity Hotspots,” no. 1 (2019) JoLA: Journal of Landscape Architecture (2019), 36–47.

John Beardsley, Designing Wildlife Habitats: Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape architecture XXXIV (Dumbarton Oaks, 2013).

Chris Reed & Nina-Marie Lister, Projective Ecologies (Actar, 2014).

Peter Atkins, Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories (Routledge, 2016).

Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (University of Minnesota Press, 2008).

Lori Gruen (ed), Critical Terms for Animal Studies (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Richard Weller, “The Garden of Intelligence,” Transition: Discourses on Architecture 59 (1998) 114–132. (text)

Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Animal Series (Reaktion Books, UK).

Richard Weller, Claire Hoch & Chieh Huang, Atlas for the End of the World.

LA+ WILD, LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, no. 1 (2015).