Summary: Today has got to be the most exciting time to design sewer treatment plants since the 1930s. Architects’ increasing willingness to apply their design expertise to work-a-day industrial projects, coupled with an economic collapse and the government’s wholesale investment in public infrastructure to fix it, is setting new performance and design expectations for our cities. cityLAB’s WPA 2.0 design competition is meant to capture this energy and channel it into remaking American cities from the ground level—or the subterranean level—up. Its source of inspiration was the original Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration, which largely shaped the urban environments cityLAB now seeks to update. WPA 2.0: Whoever Rules the Sewers Rules the Cities is calling for designs that address the infrastructure needs of our neglected and crumbling cities in the broadest sense: schools, parks, sewers, roads, storm water, solid waste, food production and distribution systems, sustainability, alternative energy generation, smart utilities, fire prevention, etc.

cityLAB is an urban think tank at UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design. The competition is open to designers from all fields, and multidisciplinary teams are encouraged to enter. The best entries, according to the competition brief, will focus on the insertion of surgical design interventions into existing urban fabric that overlap architecture with planning. A student competition will run parallel to the regular competition.

After entries are initially evaluated, six winners will be chosen and given $5,000 to develop their designs fully. Each of these fully developed designs will be presented in November at a symposium at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Jury members for WPA 2.0 are Thom Mayne, FAIA, founder of Morphosis; Cecil Balmond of Arup; Marilyn Jordan Taylor, FAIA, of SOM; Elizabeth Diller, of Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Walter Hood of Hood Design Urban Landscape + Site Architecture; and Stan Allen, AIA.

Digital design sketchbooks are due on August 7 and the six finalists will be announced on August 21.

Read the competition brief here.