Exploring 130 Years of American Design 2026

Competition Brief

Van Alen Institute, one of the United States’ oldest and most respected civic design organizations, has issued an Open Call for proposals responding to its 130-year archive of American architectural and design history. The program is titled “Open Access: Exploring 130 Years of American Design” and is open to emerging creatives across all disciplines. The proposal deadline is 28 June 2026. Five selected projects will be exhibited together at Van Alen’s Urban Room in New York City, September 28 – November 13, 2026. Each selected project receives a $3,000 honorarium. The program is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Van Alen Institute was founded in 1894 and has spent more than 130 years at the intersection of design ambition and civic life. Its archive — comprising thousands of competition boards, jury records, photographs, and correspondence — is one of the most significant collections of American architectural history in existence. Much of it has never been seen by the public.

Intent

The call positions Van Alen’s archive not as a museum piece but as living material — something to be questioned, reinterpreted, and held accountable to the present. It invites careful reflection on Van Alen’s 130-year influence within the field of design and upon the shaping of American cities through the lens of open and fair access.

Projects should provoke deep reflection on how the pursuit of greater access to design can and must progress into the future — both within the profession and as a tool to reckon with society’s greatest challenges. The brief frames the archive’s contents as a record of who was invited in, who was left out, what problems were taken up, and which perspectives were overlooked. Five guiding questions structure the call:

How have definitions of quality design, along with the way design is taught and practiced, changed over time? How has the evolution of representing design ideas impacted the way we see and talk about cities? What challenges facing cities and their inhabitants did Van Alen’s community take up — and which problems, perspectives, and narratives were overlooked? Who was invited into Van Alen’s community to shape space and exchange ideas, and who was left out despite having valuable ideas and experiences to contribute? If communities had been centered in design from the beginning, what might our cities look like today?

Purpose

This is a paid creative commission — not a competition with a cash prize pool distributed to winners. All five selected projects receive the same $3,000 honorarium, with production costs to be factored into that total. Selected projects also receive curatorial and archival support from Van Alen Institute staff, mentorship from advisors and invited professionals, access to donated materials through Materials for the Arts, professional documentation of exhibited work, and at least one participation opportunity in public programming related to the exhibition. The exhibition at Van Alen’s Urban Room is a public-facing physical show in New York City running nearly seven weeks.

Archive Access

The archive made available to applicants includes: a digital archive of more than 2,000 digitized objects browsable at past.vanalen.org; institutional records on-site at Van Alen’s office viewable by appointment (Monday–Thursday 10am–6pm), including competition programs and jury reports 1894–2008, Paris Prize in Architecture materials, publication materials from 1894, and annual reports; a finding aid listing archival boxes and binders with institutional documents; and video documentation of physical archive materials including student competition submissions across architecture, sculpture, and graphic arts, Beaux-Arts Ball materials from 1927–28, and correspondence from 1928–30.

Requirements

Open to emerging creatives aged 18 and above who are legally authorized to work in the United States or capable of receiving an artist honorarium. No formal architectural training is required. Eligible disciplines include but are not limited to: architects, archivists, artists, designers, educators, filmmakers, graphic designers, interdisciplinary practitioners, photographers, planners, researchers, scholars, and writers. Collaborative proposals are permitted but honoraria may need to be shared among collaborators.

Medium is entirely open: architectural models, drawings, images, projections, video, photography, writing, or other media. Projects may respond directly to specific materials within the archive or engage the archive’s content more thematically. Projects that invite direct audience engagement and interaction are strongly encouraged, as are multidisciplinary collaborations.

Submission requirements via Airtable:

1. Project Proposal: Written proposal maximum 1,000 words describing the archival material(s) or themes, conceptual framework, proposed medium and format, installation approach, how the work responds to or critiques the archive, and anticipated production or technical needs. Optional: sketches, diagrams, visual references, or preliminary drawings.

2. Portfolio / Work Samples: 1–3 examples of previous work in PDF, image, video link, audio link, writing sample, or exhibition documentation formats.

3. Artist Statement or Biography: Maximum 500 words.

4. Public Programming Proposal: Optional but encouraged. Proposals for related workshops, talks, readings, walking tours, performances, participatory activities, or educational engagements.

Selection Committee

1. Selection committee: Representatives from Van Alen Institute’s invited curators and staff, with additional support from advisors, Board members, and external network. Applications are evaluated on: artistic or design excellence; critical engagement with archival materials; feasibility within the exhibition timeline and budget; potential contribution to broader public discourse; relevance to the exhibition framework; strength and originality of concept; and thoughtfulness regarding representation, historical inquiry, and interpretation.

Honorarium

Benefits for Selected Projects

Key Dates

✦ ArchUp Competition Review

Van Alen Institute is one of the oldest and most institutionally credible civic design organizations in the United States, founded in 1894 and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts. This is not a commercial competition platform — it is a paid creative commission from a historic nonprofit institution with a real 130-year archive, a physical exhibition venue in New York City, and curatorial and mentorship support for selected practitioners. The $3,000 honorarium is a genuine creative commission rather than a prize, but participants should note that production costs must be covered within that total, which limits the projects to modest-scale production approaches or proposals that can leverage the donated materials from Materials for the Arts. The open eligibility — no formal architectural training required, all disciplines welcomed, collaborative proposals accepted — reflects Van Alen’s genuine commitment to broadening who gets to engage with its archive and to interrogating its own institutional history. The thematic framework of “open and fair access” is not decorative: the five guiding questions ask applicants to actively critique the archive’s historical exclusions, pedagogical biases, and representational blind spots. This is unusually self-critical for an institutional open call and gives the program genuine intellectual seriousness. The requirement for US work authorization or the ability to receive an artist honorarium limits international access to some extent — practitioners outside the United States should verify their eligibility before investing time in a proposal. The archive itself — 2,000+ digitized objects, Paris Prize submissions from 1904–1994, competition programs and jury records from 1894–2008, Beaux-Arts materials from the 1920s–30s — is an extraordinary primary source for researchers, historians, and critical practitioners working at the intersection of architectural history, race, access, pedagogy, and civic design. For practitioners working in archival art, architectural history, critical spatial practice, or interdisciplinary research, this is one of the most intellectually substantive open calls available in 2026.

Final Thoughts

The Van Alen “Open Access” call is rare in the design competition landscape: it is a funded institutional commission from a 130-year-old civic organization that asks applicants to critically engage with and challenge the institution’s own archive. The medium is entirely open, the disciplines are broad, and the guiding questions are genuinely provocative.

The proposal deadline of 28 June 2026 gives applicants less than four weeks from the current date to develop a 1,000-word proposal with work samples and an artist statement. The archive is accessible online at past.vanalen.org and institutional records are available on-site by appointment. Contact: mmorales@vanalen.org.

Registration Deadline

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