New architecture and design competitions: Wheelwright Prize, Metals in Construction, Driehaus Competition, and PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity

For this week's curated picks of architecture and design competitions listed on Bustler, we are featuring four calls in search of Venice Biennale design proposals centered on the ethos of the porch, architectural and urban design schemes for three municipalities in Spain, early-career architects that are pursuing new forms of architectural research, and designs for an affordable residential tower that features structural steel framing with a curtain wall enclosure.

For the complete directory of newly listed competitions, click here.

PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity – U.S. Pavilion Exhibits
Registration/Submission Deadline: Friday, January 17, 2025

"The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, in partnership with DesignConnects and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, invites architects, designers, artists and creatives from across the United States and its territories to submit exhibit design proposals for PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, the U.S. Pavilion exhibition at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. PORCH focuses on the representation of the U.S. through the contemporary manifestation of the porch in American architecture – a quintessential constructed place that is at once social and environmental, tectonic and performative, hospitable and intimate, generous and democratic."

Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition 2024
Registration/Submission Deadline: Tuesday, February 4, 2025

"The call for submissions for a new edition of the Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition, organized by the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation thanks to Richard H. Driehaus and the collaboration of the Spanish Ministry of Culture through its Directorate General for Cultural Heritage and Fine Arts, INTBAU Spain, and the Spanish High Council of Institutes of Architects, is now open. Proposals for each of the three municipalities selected in the first phase of the competition—Baltanás (Palencia), Irurita (Navarra), and La Fresneda (Teruel)—can be submitted until February 4, 2025. In this second phase of the competition, which is international in scope, architects of any nationality are encouraged to submit architectural and urban design proposals for any of these three locations."

Harvard GSD - Wheelwright Prize 2025
Registration/Submission Deadline: Sunday, February 9, 2025

"The annual Wheelwright Prize is dedicated to fostering expansive, intensive design research that shows potential to make a significant impact on architectural discourse. The prize is open to emerging architects practicing anywhere in the world. The primary eligibility requirement is that applicants must have received a degree from a professionally accredited architecture program in the past 15 years. An affiliation with the GSD is not required. Applicants are asked to submit a portfolio and research proposal that includes travel outside the applicant’s home country. In preparing a portfolio, applicants are encouraged to consider the various formats through which architectural research and practice can be expressed, including but not limited to built work, curatorial practice, and written output."

Metals in Construction 2025 Design Challenge - Desirable Urban Living: Design for Affordability
Registration/Submission Deadline: Thursday, March 20, 2025 (extended)

"New York City is facing its worst housing crisis in decades. To solve it means choosing sites and designs that can bring about the speedy, cost-conscious construction of affordable apartments that meet modern standards for comfort and wellbeing and are indistinguishable from those of their high end neighbors. Given these parameters, the Metals in Construction magazine 2025 Design Challenge invites students and practitioners to submit their vision for a 30-story residential tower that can be replicated on property zoned for subsidized housing.  Submissions must use structural steel framing with a curtain wall enclosure to be considered. The site selected for this speculative exercise is a lot numbered 290 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, New York."

Would you like to contribute competitions, award programs, or calls for submissions that aren't listed on Bustler yet? Send them directly to our team to review. We may include them in our next roundup.