Concordia University’s
​CoLLaboratoire invited young creative practitioners to consider the role of public art and design in increasing awareness of, and engagement in, issues around climate change at the local level. This design competition is part of a series of activities conducted by the Montreal-based not-for-profit CoLLaboratoire initiative, whose main objective is the realization of a series of art-based interactive installations that address some critical theme of sustainable living in the city.

​For more information on CoLLaboratoire (click here) and more information on the Living Experiments for Climate Change Competition  (click here for design brief)

Concordia University’s CoLLaboratoire invites young creative practitioners, be they students or recent graduates, to consider the role of public art and design in increasing awareness of, and engagement in, issues around climate change at the local level. This design competition is part of a series of activities conducted by the Montreal-based not-for-profit CoLLaboratoire initiative (http://www.ideas-be.ca/collaboratoire.html), whose main objective is the realization of a series of art-based interactive installations that address some critical theme of sustainable living in the city.

The Project
The project consists of designing the shelter(s) at the Loyola campus of Concordia University, which will also include solar energy. The participants may or may not use the existing structure. Teams will develop ideas that can both educate and encourage public conversation that might heighten awareness around climate change issues. The proposal should be well documented technically and intended for further development.

Objectives
This first installation is intended to be built on Concordia’s Loyola campus. It will represent the first of a series of interventions that will be planned over the next few years, bringing public space interventions along the entire axis of Sherbrooke Street across Montreal. In this inaugural experimentation, we are partnering with Concordia’s NSERC Smart Net-zero Energy Buildings Strategic Research Network. Submissions are encouraged to consider the use of solar power – this may be centrally featured in the design, or simply a means to power the project without reliance on the grid. Technical assistance to realize this will be available to the team with the winning design.

In addition to the build-out of the winning project – there will be an opportunity to showcase selected project submissions as part of a celebration of the CoLLaboratoire’s public launch via a public and virtual exhibition of ideas in 2017 in the Canadian Competitions Catalogue 

Prize & Awards:​
The winning team will work closely with a team of academics, professionals, and researchers to complete the technical development for realization in early 2017 on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. The maximum allowable budget for the project build-out is $23,000 (all taxes included). ​

​1st prize $1750
​(+compensation for additional design work up to $1500)
2nd prize $750
3rd Prize $350
Popular Vote 250$ 

General Criteria:

1. Imaginative shelter design (form, materiality, spatial qualities, etc.);
2. Innovative interpretation of the idea of ‘shelter’ for the Loyola campus site;
3. Incorporate solar energy and provide details of its use;
4. Evidence of some level of community consultation;
5. Consideration on how the impact of your project might be measured over time (eg.: the number of mobile devices being charged per day using the solar power).

Project Budget :
Maximum allowable budget for the project build-out is $23,000 (all taxes included).

Registration
Registration is mandatory.
The competition is open to teams of young creative practitioners be they new professionals or students, although a certain level of understanding of solar energy is necessary. At least one person within the team must be a student or a professional in a field such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, urban design, design, engineering, etc. Multi-disciplinarity within teams is strongly encouraged.

You must register your team in order to receive a team number. All documents you submit cannot contain any team names or identifiers of team members, but rather each submission must be identified by the team number you are assigned at registration. All submissions are therefore anonymous and will be judged as such.t

Contact​
For registration or for further information, please send an email to:
Ideas.be@concordia.ca
​
Please include the following information for each team member:

1. full name
2. affiliation (whether this is academic or professional)
3. a. If a student, program of study, university and year of study
   b.If a young creative practitioner the number of years of experience in design related field.

Deliverables
Each project proposal must contain 2 PDF files:

1. a PDF file (landscape A0: 891mm X 1189mm) containing the project panel which includes:
   1. a low-res version of the design project panel using language understandable by non-professionals
   2. title and team number
   3. all necessary design elements making the proposal intelligible and feasible
   4. elevations, sketches and perspective drawings of the design
   5. a drawing placing the design in its context
2. a PDF file (portrait A4: 210mm X 297mm) containing a synthesis report which includes:
   1. A cover page with the title, team number and thumbnail image for web purposes (300X300 pixels)
   2. description of concept (maximum 350 words)
   3. description of community consultation (maximum 250 words)
   4. preliminary list of materials
   5. detailed budget estimates
   6. a weTransfer link to a high-definition version of the design project panel

The two PDF files should be anonymous and include only the TEAM number you received at registration.

All proposals will be exhibited in a collective show and included on the Canadian Competitions Catalogue (www.ccc.umontreal.ca) and the Collaboratoire website once the winner is made public.

Although the copyrights remain with the teams, all team participants must agree to disseminate their projects as well as use their proposals for research purposes only. ​

Timeline + Deadlines
​Launch Date: April 15, 2016
Submission Deadline: June 15, 2016
Popular Online Vote: June 16 – June 29, 2016
Jury Meeting: July 27, 2016
Announcement of Winners:  June 30, 2016
Detailed Design and Technical Development: August – October, 2016
Construction Begins: Mid October 2016
Construction Ends: April 2017
Exhibition + Public Launch: May 2017

Supervised Design Process For Project RealizationThe winning team will work closely with a team of academics, professionals, and researchers to complete the technical development for realization in early 2017 on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University.

This phase of detailed design and technical development seeks to develop the project for construction.  The construction of the winning project is expected to begin by October 2016 for a completion date by April 2017. The launch of the constructed project will be done concurrently with the 375th Montreal celebrations in 2017.

The maximum allowable budget for the project build-out is $23,000 (all taxes included).  This budget will be observed especially during this supervised design process phase.

ProBenchmarks
There are many examples of similar public design interventions popping up around the globe that applicants can reference or be inspired by. Here are a few repositories that can act as a launching pad for your own research on the topic:

​Change as Art is a searchable database of artists, art works, and art organizations that address social and environmental sustainability.
Curating Cities The Curating Cities Database maps the increasingly important and emerging field of eco-sustainable public.
​Canadian Competitions Catalogue, documenting architectural, landscape and urban design competitions since 1945

​Please recall that community engagement is a measure that we are using to judge project submissions; this is not always the case in the above examples. The winning Collaboratoire team will make efforts to engage the Loyola and surrounding community in the process of design conceptualization and/or execution.

In association with:

Description of Site
​The location of the design intervention is in Notre Dame de Grace (NDG), Montreal, Quebec on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. The site is currently a large, utilitarian shuttle bus shelter found on the north side grounds of the campus. The shelter site is adjacent to Sherbrooke St. West and the Vanier Library building of Concordia University. While on the University’s private grounds, the site is highly trafficked, with more than 2,300 people embarking on the shuttle bus at Loyola campus on a daily basis. The shuttle does not operate on the weekends and runs on a reduced schedule in the summer. Innovative programming for these non-peak times is encouraged.

​
We invite participants to think creatively about the site, while any intervention should not get in the way of the site providing actual shelter from the weather for shuttle bus users. It could be so much more than just a bus shelter! It could be a refuge of a whole new sort, which may include any or none of: green walls or roofs, charging elements, heating pads, innovative roof tops, thermally modified materiality, weekend market helters etc. What else might people seek shelter from? What else may the shelter provide? ​