PLAY_STREET

“Stickball, stoopball, handball, hit the penny, jump rope, jacks – these games and their devotees once ruled the...streets.”

PLAY_STREET is an OPEN international ideas competition to re-imagine the urban street as a play space. The challenge of the competition is to design or plot a set of playful and performative activities that claims the street as a public space, a PLAY space.

PLAY_STREET is an official program of the 2019 Winnipeg Design Festival and is OPEN to all designers and creatives. The entrants are invited to imagine, script and illustrate a temporary PLAY-logistics and or PLAY-gears for the STREET. The design can involve gears and apparatuses that are newly designed or repurposed, and may include simple rules and or ‘game-like’ logistics: ‘how-to-play’.

Up to FIVE winning PLAY will be installed in an urban street/alley to transform the space as a play street. The PLAY will be open to the public to PLAY during the festival. 

Eligibility | Who can enter: OPEN, anyone can submit

Design criteria | Points to consider:

  • PLAY: to be simple, fun, intuitive and imaginative. 
  • PLAY: can be a new conception or a re-imagination of an existing play (i.e. street hockey)
  • GEARS: can involve re-purposing of existing gears (i.e. bats, seesaws) or new conceptions.
  • PLAYER: children, adults, or both.
  • PLAYER: Multi-player (more than one) PLAY is preferred.
  • SPECTATORS: ‘Fun-to-watch’ PLAY to be considered.
  • SAFETY: All aspects of the PLAY must be safe and appropriate for all ages.
  • APPLICATION: PLAY_STREET will be installed in a specific site during WDF 2019. Entrants are encouraged to imagine a PLAY that could also be played in other urban street conditions.
  • BUDGET/FABRICATION: affordable and easy-to-set up PLAY  imagination is encouraged. For the purpose of realization at the WDF 2019, up to CD$1,000 + in kind fabrication/material will be assigned per selected PLAY. The curators of WDF 2019 will work with the winning teams to refine the final scope of the budget and the fabrication.

Requirements | What to prepare & submit:

  • REGISTRATION: email the full names of your team to winnipegdesignfestival@gmail.com by or before 11:59 PM CST, August 9th, 2019 
  • DOCUMENT: PDF format, TWO 11” x 17” (Tabloid) in horizontal layout
  • DRAWINGS: Illustrations explaining the structures/gears/layout and the PLAY logistics 
  • TEXT: Up to 300 words to describe the PLAY
  • IDENTITY: NO NAME or ID may appear on the PDF document

Submission | When/how to submit:

  • DEADLINE: email the document (PDF) to winnipegdesignfestival@gmail.com as an attachment by or before 11:59 PM CST, August 25th, 2019
  • SIZE: The size of the attachment cannot be more than 10 MB
  • EMAIL BODY: note your name (same as the registration) and the preferred contact (email or phone) in the email BODY; NO name or ID may appear in the attached PDF document
  • EMAIL SUBJECT: note [WDF 2019 | PLAY_STREET submission] in the subject heading of the email  

Timeline | What happens when:

  • Announcement: July  5th, 2019
  • Registration: August 9th, 2019, 11:59 PM CST
  • Submission: August 25th, 2019, 11:59 PM CST
  • Results: September 1st, 2019, 11:59 CST
  • Installation: September 26th ~ 28th, 2019

Jury | Who will decide:

Luis Callejas is an associate professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and former faculty at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an architect, founding partner and former director of Paisajes Emergentes and founder and director of LCLA office. LCLA OFFICE bridges the apparent limits between architecture, landscape architecture and visual arts while combining practice with academia and applied research.

Having obtained diverse recognition in multiple public space design competitions, Luis Callejas was awarded the Architectural League of New York Prize for Young Architects in 2013 and selected as one of the world’s ten best young practices by the Iakov Chernikhov International Foundation in 2010. Callejas was nominated again for the award in 2012 and 2014. In 2016 Callejas was one of the three finalists for the Rolex Mentor and protege award.

Marianne holds a Master of Architecture Degree (Honours) from the University of Manitoba and is a registered Architect with the Architectural Institute of British Columbia.

She began her eponymous firm, Marianne Amodio Architecture Studio, in 2009. The practice was awarded the Arthur Erickson Award from Emerging Architect, followed by the AIBC Award for Emerging Firm. In 2016, the firm welcomed Harley Grusko AIBC and was renamed MA+HG Architects.

Marianne is currently a member of the City of Vancouver Regulatory Review Advisory Committee and she sits on the Board of The Eastside Culture Crawl. She is a former Board Member of the Chinatown Heritage Area Planning Committee, the Council of the Architectural Institute of British Columbia and was the Chair of the Housing Innovation Committee for the City of Vancouver Housing Re:Set. She gleefully co-hosts Pecha Kucha Vancouver.

Liz is a registered Landscape Architect and a founding Director of PUBLIC CITY Architecture. She has practiced in Perth (Australia), Seattle, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto. Prior to starting her own practice in 2011, she worked principally with Murase Architects of Seattle and Portland on large public plazas and open spaces across the United States. In 2018 Liz developed the Prairie Chapter of Building Equality in Architecture, to advance excellence and diversity across city-building professions in the west. Liz has taught design studios on topics of regional and seasonal urbanism at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto and at the University of Manitoba.