14th Annual Berkeley Prize Essay Competition for Undergraduate and Diploma Architecture Students Worldwide

Essay Prize Competition

Course(s) Offered: Writing Competition (Architecture)
Course Level: Undergraduate
Provider: Berkeley Prize
Country to Write in: Any country (worldwide)

Essay Description
The international Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence announces that the 2012 BERKELEY Essay PRIZE Competition launches on September 15, 2011.

Prize of Up to $12,500 will be awarded.

Each year the Berkeley Prize, whose primary goal is to foster a larger awareness and understanding of the social art of architecture, sponsors an Essay Competition, a Travel Fellowship Competition, and an Architectural Design Fellowship Competition, all open to undergraduate students studying architecture throughout the world.

Eligibility
The essay competition is open to all current full-time registered students in an undergraduate architecture degree program or undergraduates majoring in architecture in accredited schools of architecture worldwide.

Eligible groups
Citizens of ANY country worldwide may apply

Essay Question
Valuing the sacred
What is a sacred space? Historically, certain buildings have served as sacred places for meditation, to celebrate a religious ritual, or simply to take refuge from the pressures of everyday life. Select a place, location, or setting in your community or your local environment that you personally believe to be sacred, but that has as yet not been widely accepted as important in this way.

Tell us: why it is sacred. What community resources are needed to insure its preservation? What, if any, architectural intervention you believe is appropriate to memorialize its special nature.

Number of awards
There will be 25 selected semifinalists

Essay Prize
A total of $12,500 in prize money will be awarded to the Essay Competition winners with $4000 first place prize.

Method of Application
Essay Guideline:

• Students enrolled in any undergraduate architecture program throughout the world are invited to submit a 500-word essay proposal responding to the essay question above. Undergraduate architecture students may team up with undergraduates from Allied Arts and Social Sciences programs.
• From the pool of essay proposals received, approximately 25 are selected by the Prize Committee as particularly promising. The 25 selected individual students, or student teams, become Semifinalists.
• These Semifinalists are invited to submit a 2,500-word essay expanding on their proposals. A group of readers, composed of Committee members and invited colleagues, selects five-to-eight of the best essays and sends these Finalist essays to a jury of international academics and architects to select the winners.

At the conclusion of the Essay Competition submittals, all Semifinalists are also invited to submit for one of two BERKELEY PRIZE Fellowships: the Travel Fellowship, or the Architectural Design Fellowship. Details for each will be announced in the Spring, 2011.

DEADLINES:
All essays must be submitted on before November 1, 2011

PLEASE NOTE:
The Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Design Excellence endowment was established in the Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley to promote architecture as a social art through research, writing, and criticism: traditionally under-represented aspects of the architecture curriculum.

Submission deadline: 1 November 2011
Open to International Applicants: Yes

More Essay Information and Submission

Related: List of Essay Writing Contests