Tomorrow's Designers
The Inter-School Student Design Competition
September 2008 National Building Museum Online
Students from area architecture programs work as a team to complete the design challenge given them in the time allotted.
Photo by Barbara Laurie, AIA-DC
On Sunday, September 14, the Museum’s Great Hall will welcome architecture and landscape architecture students actively engaged in creative problem solving. The students are participants in the
Inter-school Student Design Competition (ISDC). During this competition teams of students from the Washington, D.C. area’s four accredited schools of architecture—The Catholic University of America, Howard University, the University of Maryland, and Virginia Tech’s Washington Alexandria Architecture Center—are charged with designing a solution to a real-world design problem over the course of a day-long charrette.
The ISDC is a unique program that provides hands-on learning opportunities for architecture students while giving the public unique insight into the design process. For the past 11 years, the National Building Museum has proudly served as the venue for this competition. Past competitions have included designs for a new, below-ground auditorium for the Museum and a redesign of Judiciary Square. The 2007 program focused on improving Washington, D.C.’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. Although a daunting task, the students rose to the occasion and produced many interesting design solutions. This year’s ISDC program will no doubt offer similar challenges.
An architecture student hard at work on the project design.
Barbara Laurie, AIA-DC
In addition, this year’s ISDC provides opportunities for the Museum’s teen outreach participants to meet with representatives from participating universities. In an effort to provide the Museum’s teen audience with more career-based education, professors of architecture from each of the accredited schools of architecture will talk about their school’s enrollment procedures, portfolio development, and programmatic philosophy.
The participating teens have completed programs such as
CityVision,
Investigating Where We Live, and the
Design Apprenticeship Program. These programs inspire students to examine people, processes, and materials that create structures and places. All programs are in-depth, multi-week sessions that teach middle and high school students, ages 12-18, from the Washington D.C. metro area to use the built environment for developing skills in critical and creative thinking, problem solving, analysis, evaluation, and teamwork.
STUDIOS Architecture's Todd DeGarmo, one of the judges at the 2007 Inter-School Design Competition, speaks to the students about the design process.
Photo by Barbara Laurie, AIA-DC
This year’s competition is scheduled from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. Winners of the juried competition will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Museum on Monday, September 14 beginning at 5:00 pm. Both the ISDC and the awards ceremony are free and open to the public and are held in celebration of Architecture Week in Washington, D.C.
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