For many years, the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Englewood has held a Design and Build Competition. At first, it was aimed at younger students in the area, but it has lately been redirected to collegiate level architects and designers.
“The spirit of Design and Build has always been to solve problems and create through collaboration,” the museum wrote in its competition brief for 2020. “All proposals must include narrative about how collaboration would be utilized in realizing the design. (i.e. fabricators, engineers and architects must work together to realize any design.)”
First, second and third prizes are awarded ($5000, $2,500, $1000).
“Someday, I hope we can build one of these,” project director Tim Vacca said of the Design and Build projects.
The initial call for artists stated the rules and a number of entries were received with accompanying narrative. It stated site options and requested a design for “Art as Sanctuary.”
Possible locations included: Wooded, Deciduous Forest; Coastal Bluff; Low Desert; Tropical Rainforest …
Winners were a pair of students from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro — Isaac Bodhi Backhaus and Katherine Tardif — and their project, “Occhiolism,” is proposed for a location about 10 miles west of the tiny community of Why in the scorching hot Sonoran Desert of southwestern Arizona. (Tardif is now enrolled in CU’s School of Architecture for a master’s degree.)