NE[O]ASIS Competition

This international Design Challenge invites students and young practitioners to work in women inclusive and interdisciplinary design teams to contribute ingenious and creative design ideas to a new interpretation of traditional oasis systems set in locations across Australia, the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.

NE[O]ASIS is an urban/architecture/landscape Design Idea Challenge for future desert oases to combat desertification through sustainable urban and architectural development. The aim is to contribute to urban and architectural solutions for self-resilience of climatically challenged regions in deserts and drylands.

The organisers thank all designers who will take on this challenge and contribute to Ingenious Initiatives for Sustainable Urban Development.

In response to climate emergency and the threat of an ever-increasing desertification of large regions on the planet, and in alignment with the New Urban Agenda/Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs the Challenge calls for creative design ideas showing how a new interpretation of a self-sufficient oasis in desert regions around the globe could look like, feel and work: the neo-oasis ‘NeOasis’.

Traditional oasis systems have been ingenious human made examples of how sustainability mitigated harsh climatic and scare resource prerequisites in deserts and drylands can produce little socio-cultural thriving paradises (further refer to ‘Why the Oasis’).

The design ideas for the ‘NeOasis’ shall be informed by traditional oasis knowledge and translated into the vision for a future looking version of a self-sustained oasis ( see ‘Oasis as an Eco-System’) at one of the four identified desert sites, in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and Australia, which share similar bio-climatic conditions.

The respective ‘NeOasis’ design proposals respond to socio-cultural and bio-climatic conditions, with a view to progressively achieving adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, without discrimination, universal access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation, as well as equal access for all to public goods and quality services in areas such as food security and nutrition, health, education, infrastructure, mobility and transportation, energy, air quality and livelihoods.

The NeOasis is envisaged to meet the challenges and opportunities of present and future self-sustained urban development, with architectural solutions that translates spatially a creative and sustainable vision of how we will live, work, play and co-evolve in future desert oasis systems.

It is recommended that you introduce your team, your team’s motivation and philosophy in line with the aim of Ingenious Women’s Initiatives for Sustainable Urban Development. Clear design vision, concept and proposal addressing the requirement of the Challenge are expected to derive directly out of your team motivation.

Each team can select one of the given locations, in Australia, the Arabian Peninsula and Africa, and develop the ‘NeOasis’ at the neighbourhood scale.

Clear architectural, urban and landscape design concepts will address bio-climatic and socio-cultural aspects of the selected site, with an extension of approximately 10 ha. The creative design propositions must include integration, rehabilitation and/or regeneration (when applicable) of existing buildings, parks, and infrastructure into a self-sufficient neighbourhood.

Considerations of urban metabolism as drivers of the shape, form and process of the new oasis settlement could address self-sufficiency through the integration of:

• Neo-Renewable Energy (how could the neOasis be powered?)
• Neo-Networks (smart, digital, circular, yet humane city)
• Neo-Palm Grove (the date palm grove as agricultural system of the future)
• Neo-Food (what food feed the population of the neighbourhood so that min. 50 % can be ‘home-grown’?)
• Neo-Water (circular water management)
• Neo-Building Materials (local resources)
• Neo-Circularity (design off waste and resource circularity)
• Neo-Productivity (employment opportunities and urban functions)
• Neo-Inclusion (demographic diversity, equity, safety and the inclusion)
• Neo-Socio-Cultural regenerations (tradition, community coherence, sense of belonging)
• Neo-Affordability

Awards:-

1st prize: 3.000 AU$

2nd prize: 2.000 AU$

3rd prize: 1.000 AU$

Top 10 Finalists: Exhibition at the Australia Pavilion of the Dubai Expo 2020 and mentoring sessions during Sustainable Urban Development Week.

All entries will be digitally showcased at the Australia Pavillon of the Dubai Expo 2020.
All awarded proposals will be published through international platforms, including architectural magazines and websites, and exhibited at the international Dubai Expo 2020.

Deadline:- 17-10-2021

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