image: Community Design Collaborative
The Community Design Collaborative and the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children (DVAEYC) have chosen three real-life public sites in Philadelphia—a library, recreation center, and school—for their Play Space Design Competition. They’re challenging you to transform them into play spaces that will support healthy childhoods, strong communities, and family friendly cities.
The Collaborative and DVAEYC are seeking innovative ideas from interdisciplinary team of designers, educators, and more. Sign up now! The deadline to register is November 30. To register, you just need to pick your site and identify at least one licensed professional on your team. The design competition ends with a public event in Philadelphia in March 2016 with juried awards and cash prizes ($10,000 to three teams!).
The design competition is part of Infill Philadelphia: Play Space, a partnership of the Collaborative and the DVAEYC with support from the William Penn Foundation. It’s a design initiative to explore the unexpected ways that innovative play space helps both children and communities grow. Together, we can design a more playful Philadelphia!
Competition details and registration information can be found at cdesignc.org/playspace/competition.
Alexa Bosse, Associate ASLA, is a Program Associate at the Community Design Collaborative and presented at the Children’s Outdoor Environments PPN Meeting at the 2015 ASLA Annual Meeting in Chicago. The Community Design Collaborative provides pro bono design services to nonprofit organizations in greater Philadelphia, creates engaging volunteer opportunities for design professionals, and raises awareness about the importance of design in revitalizing communities.
I looked into this competition last week and will not be entering. They are asking for way too much up front, without compensation – detailed cost estimates, storm water calculations, etc. To comply with the entry requirements, one must pay $300 and do a huge amount of work for the possibility of “winning” $10k. A proper design competition would award an honorarium for a schematic design plus a professional fee for design development. It’s regrettable that the organizers are asking designers to work for free in this way, no matter how enticing the project may be.