New architecture and design competitions: Student Steel Design, Persian Garden Suite, Open Chair, and The Quiet Tower

Looking for new, exciting architecture and design competitions to consider? Check out our latest curated picks of challenges listed on Bustler. Featured today are four briefs seeking innovative uses of steel in construction, open chair designs that can be fabricated using a standard home 3D printer, ideas for a contemporary garden suite in Toronto using traditional Persian architectural and landscape principles, and proposals that reimagine an observation tower on Latvia's remote Livonian Coast.

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

Open Chair Design Competition
Registration Deadline: Thursday, October 22, 2026
Submission Deadline: Friday, November 6, 2026

"With the rise of desktop manufacturing and accessible digital fabrication, the way we design and make objects is changing once again. Open Chair challenges participants to explore this new frontier by designing a full-scale chair that can be fabricated using a standard home 3D printer, assembled with minimal tools, and shared freely as an open design. This is not simply a challenge of aesthetics. It is a challenge of systems thinking, fabrication strategy, assembly logic, and design excellence."

Persian Garden Suite International Design Competition
Registration: Monday, November 30, 2026
Submission Deadline: Wednesday, March 31, 2027

"This international, open-idea, single-stage design competition challenges architects, designers, and students worldwide to create a contemporary, detached independent garden suite in the backyard of a standard residential house in North York, Toronto. The project aims to explore how traditional Persian architectural and landscape principles, such as privacy (Harim), spatial sequencing (Chahar-Bagh), and passive climate adaptation, can be reinterpreted to meet the contemporary lifestyle, cultural identity, and multi-generational needs of the Iranian-Canadian community within a modern Canadian framework."

The Quiet Tower
Registration Deadline: Wednesday, January 13, 2027
Submission Deadline: Monday, February 15, 2027

"Participants are invited to rethink the observation tower as more than a functional structure. Rather than designing an iconic landmark, the competition encourages proposals that create atmosphere, emotional connection, and a unique relationship between visitor and landscape. The Quiet Tower may become a place for reflection, conversation, photography, watching sunsets, or observing changing weather and distant horizons. Inspired by fire lookout towers, dune watchpoints, pilgrimage shelters, and Nordic retreat culture, the project should explore how simple architecture can create memorable experiences through sensitivity, restraint, and connection to place."

2027 Steel Design Student Competition
Registration Deadline: Wednesday, April 7, 2027
Submission Deadline: Wednesday, June 2, 2027

"Administered by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), the program is intended to challenge undergraduate and graduate students, working individually or in teams, to explore a variety of design issues related to the use of steel in design and construction. Steel must be used as the primary structural material and contain at least one space that requires a long-span steel structure, with special emphasis placed on innovation in steel design."

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.