THEME: Where, how do you live?

Program New Dwellings in a Changing Society

If the 20th Century was a period of change, when the impact of the Industrial Revolution became apparent in various sectors of the society, the 21st Century is already witnessing another transformation; it is difficult to enumerate the complexities of this new century, ranging from the movement of huge amounts of capital with the expansion of globalization and the intricacies of class differences, to lifestyle changes due to new technologies. However, most people still lead their lives in accordance with dwellings and lifestyles that were created from the 19th Century to the 20th Century, because they are familiar with these constructs. Dwellings that comprise physically solid and socially inflexible systems require people to live in conformity with them and still retain control. The division of rooms, which include the living room, the kitchen, and bedrooms, and which are used according to their functions, is almost a global phenomenon; the rooms fulfill exclusive functions respectively, and fail to offer flexibility by meeting new demands. Moreover, one also rarely finds cases reflecting various types of families and the changing environment.

Types of families have been rapidly changing in recent years, and are still changing. People, who have experienced a transition from extended families to nuclear families, are now witnessing the emergence of completely different, new types of families; and the concept of ?family? no longer maintains a solid adhesiveness as in the past, due to the growing prevalence of divorce, studying overseas, homosexual marriages, and frequent travel. The increase in the numbers of unmarried single households and the elderly population leads to an increasing trend of ‘living alone’, which raises doubts about the general functionality of dwellings. Furthermore, the extensive expansion in travel is blurring the concept of settlement as it existed in the agrarian society, and airports and hotels around the world change into the dwelling places of numerous travelers every night. As indicated by the emergence of iPods, which personalize space, and mobile phones, which transform the concept of distance, the advancement of electronic devices is changing personal relationships and rearranging the concepts of space and privacy. With people spending more time out of their houses, the dwelling in the sense of a place where families get together over a hot meal is no longer realistic. Moreover, the rise in land prices following rapid urbanization shows that dwellings can no longer be realized by merely occupying land. The interiors of offices, rooftops of buildings, dwellings on the water, and mobile homes are already being used as alternative dwellings, while other, even bolder possibilities, also exist.

We hope that students will read the signs of these changing patterns of the 21st Century society in their respective surroundings, cities, and countries, and propose new styles of dwellings reflecting the emergence of these new lifestyles. The dwelling may be for a single person or new types of families, and may even be collective dwellings. As modern architects in the early 20th Century reflected changing new lifestyles with proposals that transcended their era, rather than merely reflecting their times, we hope that applicants will create new alternatives for dwellings based on currently imaginable technological advancements and predictions of future social changes.

The competition is open to Undergraduate and graduate students up to Master’s Degree in Korea and other countries (students on leave of absence included). A team should be composed of three or less students.

More Information:
http://www.space-prize.com/

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