Non Architecture Buying Competition

Non Architecture is a nonprofit organization whose only purpose is to
encourage and support the creation of bold innovative ideas.

We can consider Architecture everything that has already been designed or built, a realm of conventional solutions, often repeated in a self-referential system. Imagine a counterpart, a Non Architecture: a world of unexplored designs and countless possibilities, that if found, could enlarge and change the boundaries of architecture permanently. In its framework, Non Architecture is developing a series of competitions whose focus on finding innovative approaches to a specific architecture topic, always related to a functional issue. Emphasis is always pointed to nontraditional, and therefore non-architectural approaches to the architect’s work.

The 9th and final competition of the series, launched on February 1st, is Buying.

The Buying competition aims to develop design proposals for the shop typology, intended as space—either material or immaterial—where goods or services are available to the public. The participants are asked to create innovative and unconventional projects, questioning the very basis of the notion of the shop. 

With critical thinking and creative attitude, the participants are urged to investigate how the shopping experience can be reformed in the future, and how the concept of the shop as a space with material and immaterial characteristics can be reinvented. The proposal can be a device, a piece of furniture, an interior design project, a pavilion, a building or an urban plan. Scale of intervention, program dimensions and location are not given, and they can be arranged by the participants to suit their project better.

Eligibility: Non Architecture Competitions are open to all human beings, from every age and cultural background, working in groups or individually.

Submission deadline is April 30.

For more information, please check Non Architecture – Buying page on
www.nonarchitecture.eu