Urban Chair 2.0: Rethinking Street Furniture

Architecture Competition: Urban Chair 2.0: Rethinking Street Furniture

Public/Street furniture are like the art pieces on any cityscape canvas. They add weight to any street perspective. They play a very important role in shaping up cities. After the huge sucess of Urban Chair, we are back with the second edition of Urban Chair design competition and want to offer a chance to the design community to come up with mind-bending new ideas for prototypical urban furniture.

Urban Chair is a design competition with the aim of developing innovative and interactive prototypes for seaters/benches/modules that can be placed in a park, street, plaza or any other kind of outdoor socio-urban zone. Urban furniture is the link between a public space and the people encapsulated within. Community seaters are the catalyst for public interaction as they create a setting for sitting, resting and other similar activities. They are responsible for drawing people together and starting the process of interaction and dialogue.

Street Furniture is an important tool for creating a sense of identity and place making. Effective and quality furniture in a public setup creates an intrinsic relationship between people and urbanscape. Industrial zeitgeist and its mass production methods have eliminated the ‘”design” from the process of creating new furniture. Though it helped in creating a sense of continuity at a macro level, street furniture became obsolete, bleak and rigid.

The competition invites designers to create dynamic furniture to be placed in zones of social and public exchange. The product should be more than just a sitting module and offer multiple ways for users to interact with it. It should become an important symbol for the zone and stimulate greater social interaction among the people.

AWARDS

Winning participants will receive prizes totaling INR 2,00,000 with the distribution as follows:

•First prize- INR 1,00,000 + Certificate

•Second prize- INR 60,000 + Certificate

•Third prize- INR 40,000 + Certificate

•10 Honorable mentions

Winners and honorable mentions will be published on our website and other international architecture magazines and websites partnered by us.

REGISTRATION &TIMELINE

Standard registration: – 1st October 2021 – 15th December 2021

• For International Participants: 60 EUR + Taxes (per team)

• For Indian Participants: 1800 INR + Taxes (per team)

Late registration: – 16th December 2021 – 14th January 2022