Introduction
Buildner is pleased to announce the results of its third annual Last Nuclear Bomb Memorial competition.
This competition is organized each year in support of a universal ban on nuclear weapons. In 2017, on the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that killed upwards of 100,000 people, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted. To recognize the importance of this treaty, Buildner seeks designs for a conceptual memorial project to be located on any known decommissioned nuclear weapon testing site. A ‘silent’ competition, submissions in this series are not permitted to include text, titles or annotation of any kind.
Buildner teamed up with a top-notch international jury panel that included: Flora Lee, Associate Partner leading the Los Angeles office of MAD Architects; Xuanru Chen of ZJJZ Architects in China; Ondřej Chybík, a co-founder of the Czech firm CHYBIK + KRISTOF; Olha Kleytman, of SBM studio in Kharkiv, Ukraine; Paul Monaghan of London-based Allford Hall Monaghan Morris | AHMM; Geoffrey Nees and Peter Newman, two artists working in the UK; Andreas Tjeldflaat of the US and Norwegian studio Framlab; British architect James Whitaker; and Wu Ziye, who leads Mix Architecture in China.
Buildner and its jury congratulate the winning and shortlisted teams, and thank all participants for contributing their time and energy to this outstanding competition.
We sincerely thank our jury panel
for their time and expertise
Flora Lee
Associate Partner, MAD Architects
USA
Xuanru Chen
architect at ZJJZ Atelier
China
Ondřej Chybík
CHYBIK + KRISTOF
Czech Republic
Paul Monaghan
Executive director and Head of Design Studio AHMM
United Kingdom
Geoff Nees
artist
Australia
Peter Newman
artist
UK
Andreas Tjeldflaat
Founder, Framlab
Norway
James Whitaker
Founder of Whitaker Studio
United Kingdom
Wu Ziye
co-founder of Mix Architecture
China
Olha Kleytman
Founder of SBM studio
Ukraine
1st Prize Winner +
Buildner Student Award
Buildner Student Award
The Island
We want to compete with many people around the world. Besides that, participating in competitions can help us improve our knowledge, skills, logical thinking, and perspective on different programs and architectural scales.
Read full interviewJury feedback summary
This marine proposal was the most popular entry among the jurors. It depicts a series of rods driven into the seafloor in the form of a circle to symbolize the scale of a nuclear blast, marking its perimeter and its center. The imagery clearly conveys the passage of time, describing a visitor who makes his way by boat across the memorial, effectively communicating its grand scale and the effort required to traverse it. The rods appear to be symbols and physical markers of a nuclear blast, as well as a means for marine life growth to take hold and flourish over time.
Buildner's commentary, recommendations and techniques review
Order your review hereThe balance of photorealistic imagery with linework and aerial drawings is compelling and completely successful at describing the large scale as well as the detail. The author has done well by choosing to include a number of drawings with varying sizes and a sensible hierarchy. The use of repeating imagery on single-sheet submissions is often not encouraged, as it requires a significant amount of space on a limited presentation, but by using variation to describe a temporal aspect of the project, this submission is able to achieve sublime effect. The primary layout criticism is that the largest and most important drawing employs dark colors, which seems at odds with the fine line drawings on a white background below. The layout could be improved to find a more balanced visual weight.
2nd Prize Winner
Burden of the seas
Jury feedback summary
This monumental proposition establishes a strong grid of spherical elements in stone or concrete which extend from deep within the water to the sandy shore of a beachside site. It is impactful for its simple repetition and its temporal nature. The project and its accessibility changes with the ebb and flow of waves and the nature of the tides, oscillating between revealing itself and being swallowed by the sea water.
Buildner's commentary, recommendations and techniques review
Order your review hereThe presentation has outstanding drawings that offer great visual appeal. The renderings are sophisticated, as is the linework of the simple plan. The primary image to the left, however, is nearly identical to that at the base on the right, and the submission would benefit from increasing the scale of the plan drawing or the addition of a detail drawing to provide greater variety. In effect it seems there is a lost opportunity here to convey more information.
3rd Prize Winner
Empty
As strange as it may sound, I enjoy architecture competitions less for their rivalry and more for the exchange of ideas with fellow architecture enthusiasts around the globe. It serves as a great exercise to demonstrate fascinating (and magical) typology and design methods, away from the traditional approach that oftentimes is full of (boring) constraints. I’m always intrigued whenever I see these competition posters because they always come up with peculiar—sometimes hilarious—challenges that spark instant curiosity, just like love at first sight!
Read full interviewJury feedback summary
The submission is elegant in its minimalist design and minimalist means of communication. It describes a vast site in a desert location where the plan of a street grid as well as the individual buildings of a theoretical city are imprinted on the land using knee walls made of soil bricks. At its center, the plan disappears to reference the dimensional extents of a nuclear blast within the city. The bricks are marked with graphics of human figures to describe an urban population but it is unclear exactly what these symbolize. A visitor appears free to wander about this site to consider the varying scales of the human, the city and the bomb.
Buildner's commentary, recommendations and techniques review
Order your review hereThe use of a primary aerial image which takes up some 40 percent of the sheet is surprisingly effective at drawing in the eye and communicating the scale of the project instantly. While the presentation uses little color variation the scale of this image is able to achieve clear visual hierarchy. The mix between massive scale and detail is also excellent, focusing on the layout and materiality of the individual brick against the larger desert site, and therefore rendering the proposition one that is architectural in nature. The use of simplified graphics to represent some form of human population is a little less sophisticated in terms of the way the drawings communicate information, and it is suggested the author consider an alternative solution.
Buildner Sustainability Award
The Path of Life
To constantly learn more and develop new projects that may one day be realized is a goal. These competitions provide a platform to showcase your work to the world.
Read full interviewJury feedback summary
The memorial consists of a large ring which appears to be some form of wooden boardwalk surrounding a vast field that is spotted with flower beds. The project is minimal and colorful and conveys an opportunity for natural regrowth on a site of destruction. Visitors wander this pseudo-garden, alternating between points of life and color, and points of dryness and emptiness.
Buildner's commentary, recommendations and techniques review
Order your review hereThe submission is well balanced visually as it benefits from the use of strong color, but the overall presentation appears unfinished. It would be strengthened by line drawings such as detailed sections to describe the materiality and construction of the large ring form. Such drawings would provide more needed technical information as well as variety, given the project tends to be quite repetitive in its continuous representation of flower beds. There is some discord between the plan and the perspectives in that it is unclear where the large paths through gardens are located on site (no such paths are shown within the aerial).