ASA international ideas competition 2017: home-ly

Home is the domain of architecture that is most intimate to all of us. Beyond its everyday function as a physical shelter for people and their activities, Home is also an embodiment of family. It is an altar of family values, traditions, rituals as well as memories.

Although Home is one of the most common types of architecture, most homes are not designed by architects. To the majority of homeowners, the work of architects is seen as marginal and idiosyncratic. Moreover, if we seek to go beyond professional boundaries, we will find that the vision of an ideal Home of most people is oftentimes at odds with that of architects.

This ideas competition seeks to reconcile these differences. We invite participants – architects and non-architects, professionals and amateurs, designers and homeowners – to challenge the status quo of Home and to showcase visionary and innovative proposals that reconsider the definition of the housing program.

In the contemporary world inundated with increasingly challenging socio-cultural phenomena, there are many issues that complicate the typical convention of Home: radical changes to traditional family structures and values; economy-driven mass (im)migrations that dynamically shift the urban vs. rural demographics and trigger housing crises; extreme urban density that induces blurred boundaries between private homes and public spaces; war-torn ethnic populations that are entirely displaced from homeland and implanted in foreign soils; human relationships that are more and more digitally connected yet more and more geographically distant; the new nomadic lifestyle that finds home wherever wireless connection is; homes and settlements world over that are in need of resettlement to evade natural disasters and effects of climate change. And this is not all.

In this competition, we ask:
How does the definition of Home change under these circumstances?
How does the design community address and respond to such changes, in the way that improves human living conditions (and keeps the profession relevant)?
How can the ordinary –the homely—be the genesis of design interventions that have extraordinary, positive impacts on neighborhoods and cities?
How can the mundane –baan baan in Thai – conditions of Home become an agent that bridges the disconnection between the design profession and the general public?
Home.ly competition invites members of the general public and the global design community to ponder these questions, identify specific Home-related areas and issues of investigation, and propose resolutions in the form of design interventions or original ideas.