Summary: The AIA is hosting its first ever design competition on Facebook—the AIA Facebook Young Designers Challenge. The competition is targeting emerging professionals, and is open to all AIAS members, all Assoc. AIA members, and all AIA young architect members. (The AIA defines young architects as being licensed 10 years or fewer.)

The AIA is asking designers to submit unbuilt building projects that address America’s most pressing design needs for the 21st century. This can include: sustainability, public infrastructure, affordable housing, retrofitting suburbs and other resource-intensive built environments, urban farming, and rehabilitating dilapidated urban cores. This requirement is intentionally flexible. The most important factor is that each design offer an innovative solution to a concrete and unsolved problem. Voting for the winner is open to everyone: participants, non-participants, AIA members, non-members, the general public, etc. The one limitation is that entrants cannot vote for their own projects. All entrants must explain how their project addresses a pressing American design needs in a written project brief of no more than 500 words. Additionally, designers must submit up to four images of their project. The competition closes on December 11 for voting, and the winning designer will be announced in AIArchitect with a feature article in January. Visit the AIA’s design competition Facebook Event page for details.

Let’s see what tomorrow’s generation of architects has to offer America today!