First prize in 5th Advanced Architecture Contest of the IAAC

Professional M.Arch. students Ji Won Jun (M2) and Josiane Crampé (M1) have won the first prize in the 5th edition of the international competition organized by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and Hewlett-Packard (HP).  In total, 240 submissions from 91 countries were evaluated by the jury members of the competition.  The winning submission by the McGill students was a final project developed during the Summer 2013 semester in the professional M.Arch. studio (DST) of Prof. Aaron Sprecher and Elisabeth Bouchard.  The winning scheme, Walking Clouds, can be viewed on the results page of the competition website.

The IAAC is a cutting-edge education and research centre dedicated to the development of architecture capable of meeting worldwide challenges with respect to the construction of habitats in the early 21st century. Based in Barcelona, IAAC is a platform for the exchange of knowledge with faculty and students from over 35 countries, including the USA, China, India, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Sudan. Students work simultaneously on multiple scales (city, building, manufacturing) and in different areas of expertise (ecology, energy, digital manufacturing, new technologies), pursuing their own lines of investigation towards the development of an integrated set of skills with which to act effectively in their home country or globally. Since 2004, the IAAC has run the biannual Advanced Architecture Contest which is open to architects, engineers, planners and designers who want to contribute to making the world more habitable by developing a proposal capable of responding to emerging challenges in areas such as ecology, information technology, architecture, and urban planning. This year's competition theme was Self-Sufficient Habitat.