2027 Design for Freedom Competition
The 2027 Design for Freedom Competition asks architecture students to connect a building proposal with evidence about how its materials are sourced. Organized by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) in partnership with Grace Farms, the competition addresses forced labor in construction supply chains through integrated design and material research.
This is not an unrestricted open call: entrants must be students at ACSA member schools and work with a faculty sponsor, who completes registration. Register by 7 April 2027; the later submission deadline does not extend eligibility to register.
Brief and eligibility
| Item | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Design task | Select a site and building program with the faculty sponsor, then show how spatial decisions and material sourcing respond to Design for Freedom principles. |
| Site | Chosen by the student and/or faculty sponsor. Explain site selection, access and context graphically; consider existing materials, reuse, nearby resources and the communities affected. |
| Material investigation | Trace supply chains from extraction to finished products. The brief requests graphic supply-chain documentation for one to three materials, identifying risks and explaining sourcing choices. |
| Eligible participants | Students at ACSA member schools worldwide; individual entries or teams of up to five students, with a faculty sponsor. |
| Academic scope | Work should be structured over one semester of the 2026–2027 academic year. |
| Type of opportunity | Student design and research competition. No construction commission, fabrication budget or guaranteed implementation is announced. |
Dates and registration
| Stage | Deadline or period |
|---|---|
| Faculty registration | 7 April 2027. No closing hour or time zone is specified for this stage. |
| Final online submission | 3 June 2027 at 06:59 UTC, converted from the official 2 June deadline at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. |
| Jury review | Summer 2027 |
| Results | Fall 2027 |
| Planned exhibition | 2028 ACSA Annual Meeting and 2028 AIA National Convention, with a competition summary publication. |
Faculty register each individual or team through the ACSA website. Registration details may be edited until a student starts the final submission. Registered participants receive upload instructions by email. Saving a submission is not enough: the completion button must be pressed, and no further edits are allowed after final submission. A team submits its project only once.
Required submission
| Component | Specification |
|---|---|
| Presentation boards | Four square digital boards, each 20 × 20 inches (50.8 × 50.8 cm), uploaded separately as high-resolution BMP, GIF, JPEG, JPG or PNG files. PDF is not listed as an accepted board format. |
| Design essay | Maximum 300 words explaining the ethical and equitable material strategy; entered in the online text field. |
| Program summary | Maximum 300 words describing spaces and areas, including interior and exterior spaces and total net and gross areas. |
| Drawings | Contextual three-dimensional views, axonometrics, perspectives, montages or model photographs; site plan with access, north arrow and graphic scale; sections, floor plans and large-scale integrated-design details. |
| Research graphics | Document material choices and processes, supply-chain findings and risk-reduction strategies. Diagrams, matrices and charts are encouraged. |
| Anonymity | Do not identify students, schools or faculty on boards, in the abstract or program summary, project title or filenames. |
| Language and file limits | The public rules are in English but do not explicitly prescribe the submission language, a numeric image resolution or maximum file size. Confirm these requirements in the upload instructions. |
| AI use | Disclose any AI use in the design essay. Students remain responsible for originality, academic integrity and the accuracy of generated content. |
Incomplete or undocumented entries may be disqualified. The graphics must communicate both design and research without depending on the short essay to explain the project.
Fees and prizes
There is no entry or submission fee for eligible students. The published prize pool is USD 14,000, split between student recipients and faculty sponsors as below. These are original USD amounts, checked on 16 October 2026; no currency conversion is required.
| Placement | Student or student team | Faculty sponsor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| First | USD 5,000 | USD 2,000 |
| Second | USD 3,000 | USD 1,200 |
| Third | USD 2,000 | USD 800 |
Awards and honorable mentions are at the jury’s discretion. The stated student award is not a separate payment to every team member. Tax treatment and payment arrangements are not detailed in the reviewed public rules. With no entry fee, there is no entry-fee refund issue; exhibition and publication are recognition, not additional cash or an implementation budget.
Organizer and jury
ACSA is an international association of architecture schools founded in 1912. Grace Farms leads the Design for Freedom initiative, launched in 2020. Their documented 2025 competition included design and material-research awards: examples were Peace Museum – Beyond the Scars and Unmasking Greenwashing: Creating an Ethical Timber Supply Chain. Those precedents demonstrate an earlier award cycle, not a promise to build winning schemes.
| 2027 juror | Published experience relevant to the brief |
|---|---|
| Curtis Clay | Regional Design Director at CannonDesign; previously led architecture for the U.S. Department of State’s embassy program, with work addressing forced labor in building-material supply chains. |
| Nina Cooke John | Founder of Studio Cooke John; architectural practice focused on placemaking and relationships between people and their built surroundings. |
| Rick Cook | Founding partner of COOKFOX; experience in sustainable architecture, supportive housing, schools and adaptive reuse. |
| Julia Gamolina | Associate principal at Ennead Architects; architectural communication, professional visibility and advocacy for women in the built environment. |
| Suchi Reddy | Founder of Reddymade; designed the Humanscale Chicago showroom as a Design for Freedom pilot project. |
The published criteria assess the integration of site, program and materials; rigor of research; supply-chain transparency; ethical responsibility; social and environmental sustainability; circularity; contextual response; and the clarity of visual communication.
Rights and conditions
Winning entrants must provide high-resolution original files. Uploading grants ACSA rights to use winning submissions in publications, online material, promotional resources and exhibitions, with authorship credited to students, faculty and institutions. Entrants warrant originality and authorship. The reviewed rules do not specify a duration for that permission or announce an assignment of copyright; applicants should read the complete submission terms before uploading.
✦ ArchUp Competition Review
The competition’s strongest feature is its treatment of procurement as part of architectural design. Asking students to trace selected materials can make a specification legible as a social and spatial decision, rather than an environmental claim attached after the building has been designed.
The jury combines design practice with direct experience of ethical sourcing. A credible entry should nevertheless distinguish verified supplier information, documented risk and untested assumptions. A short supply chain or recycled material is not, by itself, proof that forced labor has been eliminated.
Free entry and a published division of cash awards support a clear participation decision. The principal limits are institutional eligibility and the workload required to connect research to a fully documented proposal. This is a pedagogical opportunity with recognition and prizes, not a funded route to construction.
Sources reviewed: the organizer’s 2027 overview, program and registration rules, and its published 2025 results. Checked 16 October 2026. The committee’s assessment above is editorial interpretation.
Related competitions — Editors’ selection
For related educational and socially focused briefs, see the Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge and the William Gladstone School academic-wing competition. Each article sets out its own eligibility and deadlines.
Countdown to final submission: 3 June 2027, 06:59 UTC. Registration must be completed first, by 7 April 2027; its closing hour is not published.
