Last week the final judging occurred on the AIA Dallas YAF design competition to design playhouses for the 2010 ORIX Parade of Playhouses at NorthPark Center benefiting Dallas CASA. Recently, members of Dallas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) teamed up with the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (Dallas AIA) to coordinate an architectural design competition for the annual Parade of Playhouses charity event. A group within the chapter known as the Young Architects Forum (YAF) are the facilitators for this program. YAF is a committee that coordinates and promotes activities for young architects and interns while providing opportunities for networking, professional development and recognition. A ‘Young Architect’ is considered to be a practicing architect who has been licensed for ten years or less. The Parade of Playhouses, hosted each year at NorthPark Center, provides an opportunity to help abused and neglected children realize their dreams of finding safe, permanent homes. In its 14th year, the event raises public awareness about child abuse, the plight of children in foster care in Dallas County and ways you can help. During the two-week Parade of Playhouses event, visitors to NorthPark purchase raffle tickets for chances to win one of many extraordinary custom-built playhouses. The playhouse drawing is held during the event’s closing ceremony currently scheduled for August 22nd. The process for the competition was done in in two phases: the first involved having two separate groups of judges (9 individuals in total) at different locations meet to review all the submissions. Their charge was to evaluate and assign a point total to each entry based on the entry criteria identified in the submission requirements. The AIA Dallas Chapter then independently tallied the results and 18 individuals were notified that they had been advanced to the jury round, which took place last Friday, May 8th. The judges who took part on that panel included:
Judi Napier – ORIX
Beverly Levy – Director, Dallas CASA
Carolyn Newham – Director of Development and Finance, CASA
Sara Rockey – Events Coordinator, CASA
Richard Cavnar – Vice President – Estimating, Spring Valley Construction
Michael Malone – WKMC Architects
Bob Bullis – Architect, VP of Programs AIA Dallas Chapter
Bob Borson – Bernbaum Magadini Architects
All 18 entries were printed up on 24″ x 36″ tall boards and spread throughout a large room at the Dallas Center for Architecture. Each judge was given a unique color of stickers and went around individually and placed a sticker on the entries that they felt best represented the requirements and goals identified in the competition brief. We did not place a limit on the number of entries each judge could tag – they could say they liked every single one if they chose. After evaluating the results from the individual judging phase, it was decided that the cutoff to move onto the group discussion round was 4 stickers; which advanced 8 of the 18. Only one entry received a sticker from every judge so it was immediately advanced to be one of the four playhouses identified for construction. Of the remaining 7 entries, the average number of votes was 6, which was great because it was an indication of how consistent the entries were and how favorably each was received. The final judging round took around 3 hours and proved to be pretty difficult. In the end, the entries that would get constructed are:
Spring Valley Construction is the construction company that is sponsoring the construction of the winning playhouses came on-board very early in this process and made this competition possible. I am extremely grateful to Tim Guedry, Vice President-Project Management at Spring Valley for so enthusiastically being a part of this process For more information on the opportunities for young architects, architectural interns and students interested in architecture, please visit the AIA Dallas Chapter YAF blog. I am including the other entries that made it to the jury here so that you can see how much fun this competition turned out to be. Out of all the entries submitted, 57% came from students currently enrolled in high school or college, 31% came from architectural interns (those working towards their architectural license) and 12% were young architects. We were really happy with the diversity of entrants for this event and we were very happy to see the overall quality of the playhouses submitted or consideration. Hopefully, everyone will consider entering this competition again next year.
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If you are interested in learning more about 2010 ORIX Parade of Playhouses at NorthPark Center benefiting Dallas CASA, please feel free to contact the event coordinator Sara Rockey at srockey@dallascasa.org
If you are interested in seeing my playhouse design for ORIX, you can find it here