Call for nonurban ideas 2021.
Nonurbanism, in collaboration with Mango Architecture, is pleased to invite architects, students, engineers, designers, and artists from around the globe to take part in the 'Call for nonurban Ideas 2021'. It recognizes outstanding ideas that address the unequal and often extractive relationships between the urban and nonurban halves of the world, by speaking to the people living on the peripheries of large metropolitan centres, cities, small towns or in rural areas. Here, we would like you to generate proposals that focus on the strengths of communities, upholding the dignity of humanity and supplanting current, dominant urbanizing biases.
Ideas may spring from any concern, be it socio-cultural, socio-political or socio-economic but finding expression in the spatial relationships between communities and their environments including the commons - land, water, forest or settlements. Specifically, it is a call to examine the relationships between rural communities and the processes that define them.
There are no restrictions regarding site, program, or size. The objective is to provide maximum freedom to the participants to engage the project without constraints in the most creative way. However, we urge you to profile a nonurban community where you have specific native insights into the culture and legacies of the area. Such a proposal can be developed for submission to invested authorities and/or private international funders.
Expert Jury Panel
In-House Jury members
Evaluation criteria
Each project proposal will be largely evaluated on the strength and clarity of the problem definition and imagination of the proposal. Project feasibility and research about possible funders for your hypothetical proposal could also be parallel thought processes while drafting the proposal. However, the following criteria could be used as a guide -
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Program and problem definition
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Quality of research
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Adaptation and adherence to social and cultural contexts
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Use of growing systemic understanding and its implications for contemporary dilemmas
If selected, the winner, along with prize money will be considered to join the nonurbanism team for eventual publication and/or developing their
project for execution
Submission Guidelines
Participants are welcome to involve local volunteers, civic associations and other proponents to reinforce their proposal. However, we would like you to restrict to one or two principal investigators (maximum of 2 members) when registering for the call for us to invite in collaboration when and if
the project gets selected.
All submissions should be mailed to submissions@nonurbanism.com
A minimum of three and a maximum of six A4 pages with the project information including site location, problem definition, unique community
insights and short notes on culture, economy and people must be included.
Additional information on local institutions and project stakeholders will be useful. Multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborations on projects are also highly encouraged.
Participants are encouraged to submit all the information they consider necessary to explain their proposal either as an essay or as multimedia proposal aided by concept sketches, drawings and photographs.Thus, the content could be represented as (but not limited to) any of the formats below.
The resolution of the pages must be in RGB mode and saved as a PDF file. The upper right corner of each page must contain the participation number (provided after registration). There should not be any marks or any other form of identification. The files must be named after the registration number followed by the board number.
A DOC file containing the project abstract (300 words max). This file must be named after the registration number followed by the word “statement”.
Registration timeline
Early-Bird Registration dates:
25th September 2020 - 24th October 2020
Fee - USD 10 / INR 500
Standard Registration dates:
25th October 2020 - 24th December 2020
Fee - USD 20 / INR 700
Late Registration dates:
25th December 2020 - 28th February 2021
Fee - USD 30 / INR 1000
Submission Deadline:
28th February 2021
Final results announcement:
3rd April 2021
Since our competition partner, Team 'mango architecture' is based out of India, all deadlines will be calculated at 11.59 PM Indian Standard time (IST)
of the mentioned dates.
Prizes
First Prize - 350 USD
Second Prize - 200 USD
Third Prize - 150 USD
15 Honourable mentions will be selected by the jury for publication.
15 Special mention will be selected by the jury for publication.
E- certificates will be mailed to each and every participant.
For content-related questions, mail us at
For registration-related questions, Mail to
For our extended brief: Click here