Eleven's Architecture and Design Competition - PLASTIC WORLDS

Eleven’s new competition 'Plastic Worlds’ is now open for registration. We invite creatives and visionaries from all around the world to join in and fight plastic pollution through raw creativity, imagination and talent.

Plastic pollution in our oceans is one of the biggest environmental problems we are facing today on our planet. It is no longer an occurrence reserved to isolated pockets of our earth, but rather a booming global phenomenon. We are now witnessing the exponential growth of a world-wide plastic epidemic, as our planet is becoming covered in man-made waste. Every year, we produce over 300 million tonnes of plastic.

By design, plastic is virtually indestructible and hence very hard to deal with as waste in an ecological way. Between 8 to 12 million tons of plastic pollution end up in our oceans every year, fuelled by gigantic river systems which pump the discarded plastics from our cities to our seas

This is quickly killing our planet’s marine life – from plankton to whales, corals, birds, seals and turtles – and destroying their delicate ecosystems. But this is just the beginning, as the amount of plastic in the ocean is set to increase tenfold by 2020.

The urgency to act is the driving force behind this competition: a challenge designed to get the creative community engaged with our plastic world and propose innovative solutions from a design-led solution. In this competition, you are asked to think of ways to fight the plastic problem in our waters: from rivers to oceans.

Eleven designed the competition with two keywords in mind, each with a specific objective and site typology linked to it. The first is ‘prevention’, which is linked to rivers and focuses on halting the plastic flow. The second, is the concept of ‘action’, which is linked to the oceans and asks to engage with the cleaning up of the existing pollution. Between these two themes, there are infinite degrees of cross-pollination, which you are also free to explore in your designs. For those who are interested in a more comprehensive strategy, there is also the possibility of dealing with the whole plastic pollution route: from source (river) to destination (ocean).

Ultimately, it is up to you individually to define what the scope of the challenge is and what the outcome of this competition will be. Is it a structure, a series of structures, a product, a vehicle, an idea, a new place, a strategy or a combination of things? You decide.

www.eleven-magazine.com/competitions

Competition Fees:
Early Bird:     £60
Standard:         £90
Late Bloomer:     £120

Competition Awards:
Winner: £2000
Runner-Up: £400
Minimum 6 Honourable Mentions: no cash (boo) but lots of glory (yay)!
People’s Choice Award (selected by general public voting): £100