@ALL Calls for Ideas to Create Prototypes of Solar Embodied Environment Design, Otherwise Known as SEED, the Minimum Unit of Human Habitat in Nature
Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) May 01, 2015 -- Sustainable living is becoming more vital to our future. When it comes to temporary housing, making it environmentally friendly is even more important.
In search for the answer to this problem, Qingyun Ma, renowned Chinese architect, educator and creator, has launched a design competition through his organization @ALL. The project, known as SEED® for Future, is a competition for a small, light and impermanent habitat.
Envisioned as an outdoor living unit, self-sufficient and independent to nature, SEED will provide housing for the short term, able to dissolve through natural processes once the housing is no longer needed. It is geared for outdoor use primarily for one to two people.
SEED stands for solar embodied environmental design. Ma, known for his careful word selection, says the acronym and what it stands for is intentional. "I selected it to inspire designers to search for the basis of human habitat," says Ma. "The design should find equilibrium between individual livability and ecological sustainability, celebrating the moment between human intervention and nature in the most beautiful and precious way, as does a seed." Ma's goal is for the winning designs to be used for temporary housing during crises, as well as tourism type events such as outdoor festivals.
The competition, which is open to anyone in the world, launches this week with a deadline of July 31, 2015, for the submission of designs. The winners will be chosen by popular vote on the @ALL website (http://bit.ly/mada-seed), and will be announced August 4, 2015.
Ma also is encouraging cooperation: the finalists and winners will work with other groups – including scientists, artists, engineers, industrialists and other creative citizens of the world – to develop the ideas for build-out. Six of the top designs will be built in China and Hawaii, and designs from 50 of the finalists will be curated for worldwide exhibition and published in a book.
For more information on the competition, including submission requirements, visit the @ALL website.
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Qingyun Ma holds the Della and Harry MacDonald Dean's Chair in Architecture at the University of Southern California. His architectural firm, MADAs.p.a.m., has offices in Los Angeles, Beijing and Shanghai.
In addition to Ma, advisors to this project include Feng Deng, co-founder of Northern Light Venture Capital in 2005, formerly vice president of corporate strategy at Juniper Networks and a co-founder of NetScreen Technologies; world renowned architect Rem Koolhaas; Dr. Mark Breitenberg of Art Center College and former president of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design; and David Greenberg, architectural designer, ecologist and worldwide expert on Sustainable Ruralism.
Tracy Tao, @ALL, http://www.spamall.com.cn/portfolio/seed-competition_seed01/, 617-816-5063, [email protected]
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