Competition / d3 Natural Systems 2016 / d3 New York

The study of natural systems offers architects and designers significant potential as a platform for alternative, ecologically-performative design strategies. The d3 Natural Systems competition invites architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore the potential of analyzing, documenting, and deploying nature-based influences in architecture, urbanism, interiors, and designed objects. 

Established in 2009, the annual d3 Natural Systems competition is an established voice in alternative architecture and one of the most notable awards in speculative, performance-based design. It recognizes exemplary ideas that redefine design as an ecological project through the implementation of advanced technologies, materials, and social interventions that engage adaptability, globalization, and emergence. P

ublished in London-based Wiley-Blackwell AD journal’s theme issue “The New Pastoralism: Landscape into Architecture” as a leading example of environmental innovation, the annual d3 Natural Systems competition is a critical voice in ecological architecture and design. The 2016 competition calls for innovative proposals that advance sustainable thought and performance through the study of intrinsic environmental geometries, behaviors, and flows. By identifying, examining, and applying their structural order on form and function--bottom-up, performance-based solutions for limitless building typologies, functional programs, material conditions, and products may be realized. 

Emergence suggests that design expression requires purpose beyond formal assumption and aesthetic experimentation itself. Concurrent with sustainable thought, the d3 Natural Systems competition assumes that architecture and design not simply form, but rather perform various functions beyond those conventionally associated with buildings, spaces, and objects. Submissions must be environmentally responsible while advancing inventive conceptual solutions. Although proposals should be technologically feasible, they may suggest fantastical visions of a sustainable global future. The d3 Natural Systems competition allows designers freedom to approach their creative process in a scale-appropriate manner--from large-scale master planning endeavors and individual building concepts, to notions of interior detail and product design. 

Although there are no restrictions on site, scale, program, or building typology, proposals should carefully address their selected context. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, the d3 Natural Systems competition welcomes work of all scales from design disciplines including, but not limited to, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, environmental design, interior architecture, interior design, industrial design, interaction design, furniture design, and fashion design.