Launched last year, the SHIFT Architecture Challenge is a new Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) program created to highlight the distinct contribution architects and architectural thinking bring to addressing key societal issues. It aims to showcase the profession’s belief that good design can bring about positive change.
Now accepting submissions, the program invites Ontario architects and their collaborative teams to respond to an identified area of concern using their skills and insights. It will run biennially, beginning with the SHIFT 2019 Infrastructure/Architecture Challenge.
In a world facing increasingly urgent and complex challenges—climate change, forced migration, poverty, an aging population and beyond—the need for responsible, innovative and inspiring architectural solutions has never been greater.
Architects are ideally suited to propose creative solutions. The OAA challenges the profession to further enhance the public’s perception of architecture as a force that acts as a catalyst for positive social change. The SHIFT Architecture Challenge will recognize those architects, both emerging and established, whose responses to the challenge best embody these qualities.
The Challenge articulates the importance of architectural thinking as a social determinant that impacts the well-being of people and the planet, and enables the architectural profession to be viewed by the public in a new light, while reflecting the capacity for design thinking to permeate all aspects of life.
Starting next year, the SHIFT Architecture Challenge will operate on a two-year cycle, running in “odd years” as of 2019 (i.e. 2019, 2021, 2023, 2025…). Each edition of the program will have a specific theme. The 2019 theme is infrastructure. Submissions for the 2019 SHIFT Architecture are due by January 18.
More information about the SHIFT Architecture Challenge is available via the OAA’s newly launched SHIFT website, linked here.