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Wanderer's Wonder: now closed for entry

People have been exploring local areas more than ever. This competition seeks ideas for a playful structure to provide a place to rest and enhance a walk outdoors – with a chance to win £1,000

Wanderer's Wonder: A new competition brought to you by RIBA Journal and the Galvanizers Association asks entries to design a resting point for the great outdoors.
Wanderer's Wonder: A new competition brought to you by RIBA Journal and the Galvanizers Association asks entries to design a resting point for the great outdoors. Credit: Moiseenko Maksim

Deadline: extended: now 2 pm Friday 19th November

For our physical and mental wellbeing, daily walks have become synonymous with the pandemic and lockdowns. Many of us have ventured out to explore local environments beyond our front doors more than ever before. We’ve pounded the streets, parks, paths and fields, and gone on holiday closer to home. We’ve got to know familiar places better and found new ones along the way. 

Wanderer’s Wonder is a new competition brought to you by RIBA Journal and the Galvanizers Association. It invites proposals for a fun, playful building or structure for rest and recuperation that would enhance a walk in the great outdoors – rural or urban, near to home or far, in which you could spend a few minutes or stay overnight. Designs can include any imagined facilities. The structure must use galvanized steel, ideally both structurally and aesthetically. Judges will be looking for sustainability and reuse in line with the circular economy.

Is it a platform that enables a better vantage point? An information kiosk to guide you further? A reinvention of the Scottish bothy? Or a refuge of a different kind on the seashore? Anything goes so long as it’s wonderful, brings out the allure of its environment and is a thing of beauty.

Sustainability and re-use are fundamental to the brief and proposals should fit into a circular economy ideology by taking advantage of one of galvanized steel’s primary attributes to be recycled and repurposed. The building or structure should be light-footed, modular, demountable and movable to new locations. In terms of size, it should fit (theoretically) onto the back of a lorry for transportation. It will be imbued with possibility of having multiple lifecycles and of being reconfigured entirely, responding to the climate emergency. Winning designs will be creative, dynamically exhibiting both the elegance and robustness of hot dip galvanized steel, while generating simple, pleasurable and practical solutions to the brief and be re-usable to be sustainable.

Share with us your Wanderer’s Wonder and you could win £1,000.

ENTER HERE

INSPIRATION

  • The Rising Path, a viewing platform designed by Chadwick Dryer Clarke Studio at the Cambridge Botanical Gardens allows visitors to be closer to the surrounding trees canopy.
    The Rising Path, a viewing platform designed by Chadwick Dryer Clarke Studio at the Cambridge Botanical Gardens allows visitors to be closer to the surrounding trees canopy. Credit: Richard-Chivers
  • Please Be Seated designed by Paul Cocksedge with Arup reuses scaffolding to create an outdoor seating place at Finsbury Avenue Square.
    Please Be Seated designed by Paul Cocksedge with Arup reuses scaffolding to create an outdoor seating place at Finsbury Avenue Square. Credit: Mark Cocksedge
  • Be Well Pavilion designed by WR-AP architects for Clerkenwell Design Week 2019 exhibits many formats of galvanized steel.
    Be Well Pavilion designed by WR-AP architects for Clerkenwell Design Week 2019 exhibits many formats of galvanized steel. Credit: Tino Antoniou
  • Karlsruhe School, Germany, uses galvanized steel as the primary cladding material.
    Karlsruhe School, Germany, uses galvanized steel as the primary cladding material. Credit: Christian Richters / VIEW
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THE BRIEF
In this ideas competition, we are asking entrants to design a building or structure for shelter, rest and recuperation. It can have any other additional function but should be modular, demountable, reusable and be designed to promote and draw out the beauty of a place. It does not need a specific location but should be intended conceptually for a location in the UK or Ireland with their climatic conditions. While the building will be made up of a palette of materials, we would like to see hot dip galvanized steel as an integral part of the overall material strategy, ideally both structurally and aesthetically, and the structure to be actively sustainable.

SUBMISSION
Entries must include the following and be laid out on no more than two A3 sheets, supplied electronically as pdfs:
> An explanation of no more than 500 words, describing the building design, stating where galvanized products have been used
> Plans and sections showing structure, build-up and material composition
> Axonometric or any other images

Eligibility
>  Open to qualified Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 architectural students and architects
>  Projects must be theoretically sited in the UK or Ireland

DEADLINE
2 pm UK time on Friday 19th November 2021

NOTES
> The judges’ decision is final
> The first prize is £1,000 and there are three commended prizes of £250. Shortlisted entries will be notified in writing, with winners announced in the RIBA Journal February 2022 print issue and on ribaj.com
> No correspondence will be entered into by the organisers or judges regarding entries and final decisions

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Wanderer’s Wonder is produced in partnership with Galvanizers Association. For more on galvanizing and a guide to it and the circular economy, see galvanizing.org.uk

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