Rules of the Phase Two

Competition entrants may be natural or legal persons, from Spain or any other country. Teams may also be formed by several natural persons, several legal persons, or by natural persons and legal persons at once.

The number of natural and legal persons who may form a team and figure as authors of a single proposal is limited to four, although the team may contain additional collaborators figuring as such.

Composition of Teams

Teams shall be made up of at least one architect in possession of a university qualification entitling him/her to practice or at least one architecture firm licensed to practice the profession.

Teams shall include one or more associated proposal authors of which one will figure as the team representative, and may also contain further collaborators.

Associates: Associates are regarded as co-authors of the project and as such will figure in any publications or exhibitions concerning the winning projects. They may be natural or physical persons. At least one of the associates must be licensed for the practice of architecture.

Team representative: Each team should appoint from among its number a “team representative,” who shall be the sole contact person throughout the competition. All communications shall pass through a single email address, that of the team representative, which may not be changed during the competition.

Collaborators: Teams may include assistants known as “collaborators,” from the same or other disciplines. Collaborators, whether qualified or not, are not regarded as authors of the project but are deemed to have contributed to its realization. They shall figure as collaborators in any publications or exhibitions concerning the winning projects.

For each of the three project sites the jury may award no more than one first prize (to the competition winner) and no more than three honorable mentions.

For each of the three sites the authors of the proposals winning the first prize will receive a total of €12,000 (VAT not included), and the authors of proposals receiving any honorable mentions that the jury may award shall receive €2,000 (VAT not included).

Once the results have been announced, the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation will hold an awards ceremony and may organize other activities for presenting the results as well as issuing publications or mounting exhibitions to give them publicity.

The various prizes involved in this competition shall be paid against an invoice made out by the winners for the prize received and the relevant amount.

Registration

Registration is free of charge via the competition website: www.driehauscompetition.com.

Entrants should fill out the registration form with name and contact details for every team member, and accept these rules. The main email address with which each team is registered (linked to the “team representative”) shall be the channel of communication with the team and may not be changed. Once the registration process is complete you will receive a confirmation email with a CODE that will identify your project and guarantee the anonymity of proposals submitted. The personal data and contact details linked to this code will be stored so as to ensure that proposals remain anonymous until the jury has given its decision.

Only one proposal may be submitted for each registration, though the same team may register and submit proposals for more than one site. An independent code will accordingly be assigned for each such registration.

Queries

Any queries or inquiries that entrants may have in the course of the competition may be sent through the query tool provided on the frequently asked questions section of this website, although any communications with the organization should not allow the proposals to be linked to their authors, so that anonymity is maintained.

Documentation to be Submitted

Proposals must be submitted digitally, in the formats indicated below. No paper documents or other physical media such as models may be supplied. Nor will videos or animations be admissible.

The proposal should be submitted before 4 February 2025 at 19:00 (Madrid time)

The information may be supplied in English or in Spanish.

The documentation deliverable to the competition will consist of the files detailed below, to be uploaded via the document upload tool provided. All files should be identified with the code assigned to the team on registration. No file may contain any reference to the identities of the proposal authors or of their collaborators. Should either of these rules not be observed, the proposal will have to be disqualified.
The following files should be supplied:

1.- A minimum of two and a maximum of four horizontal A1-size panels in PDF format, including at least the following graphic information:

• A site plan.
• An overview of the proposed design, showing its relationship with the context for which it is intended.
• As many detailed views as required for the proposal and its relationship with the context to be duly understood.
• Plan views, sections, and elevations as required to suitably define the proposed architecture and urban design.
• Construction details reflecting a knowledge and application of local building tradition.

Each panel should clearly indicate the proposal title, the site for which it is intended, and the team’s CODE. All drawings should be accompanied by the corresponding graphic scale.

They should be uploaded with a filename containing the team code followed by an underscore and the panel(s) included, e.g. 0654_Panel1 or 8795_ Panels1-4.

Should a team need to correct and resend any documents, these should be given the same name (e.g. 0654_Panel1 or 8795_ Panels1-4.) to replace the one previously sent.

2.- A3-size dossier in PDF format, including the following information:

• A description of the proposal of up to two pages.
• Basic estimated budget and quantities and basic approximate timeline for possible completion milestones. This section should be of up to four pages. 

This document should also contain the proposal title, the site for which it is intended, and the team’s CODE. These should be uploaded with a filename containing the team code followed by an underscore and the word “Dossier”, e.g. 1685_Dossier.

Should a team need to correct and resend the dossier, it should proceed as indicated above for panels.

3.- Promotional material including a description of the proposal of up to 300 words in Word format and up to 8 pictures (jpg or tiff, 300 dpi, max size A4), with drawings and images representative of the proposed design. All promotional material should be uploaded in a single compressed file in zip format.

The documents should also contain the proposal title, the site for which it is intended, and the team’s ID code. The file with this material should be uploaded with a filename containing the team code followed by an underscore and the word “Promotional”, e.g. 1685_Promotional.

Should a team need to correct and resend this promotional material, the procedure shall be as indicated for the panels and dossier.

Any non-observance of these specifications may entail the disqualification of a team of entrants.

Submitting a proposal involves unconditional acceptance by participants of all the contents of these rules.

Anonymity of Proposals

Once the period for submitting proposals has ended, the documentation delivered by each team will be prepared for the jury’s consideration by persons not part of the jury. This material shall be invalid if it contains any reference to its authors beyond the code provided to the team on registration.

Once the competition prizes have been assigned, the jury will lift the anonymity of the winning proposals. This will automatically connect the project code with the team members detailed in the initial registration via the competition website.

Entrants undertake, on submitting their proposal, not to publicize it prior to the jury’s decision, so as to assure anonymity and the competition’s objectivity. Any breach of this undertaking shall result in a proposal’s immediate disqualification. Entrants may not enter into communications concerning the competition with the jury members.

The jury shall be responsible for appraising and rating the proposals submitted so as to determine which are most suitable in keeping with the competition rules and the prizes offered.

The jury will consider all the projects complying with the competition rules and will be sovereign in its assessment. The jury may decide whether or not to exclude a team of entrants according to these rules, and whether or not to award the competition prizes according to the quality of the proposals received.

The jury may decide not to award all of the prizes offered or to declare the competition void if none of the proposals submitted is considered to satisfy the criteria provided in these rules. In this event the jury will make its reasons public.

Composition of the Jury

The Members of the Jury are appointed by the institutions collaborating in the organization of the competition: the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation, the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport, and the Spanish High Council of Institutes of Architects.

The authorities responsible for the proposed sites will also supply a jury member to appraise the proposals for the relevant location.

Appraisal of proposals

In selecting the winning projects, the jury shall take account of the following criteria in assessing the proposals:

• Their ability to help generate an urban fabric that is more beautiful, sustainable, coherent, and socially inclusive.
• Their ability to give a response of quality to all the issues or opportunities of interest to the community for which they are intended, as well as offering solutions of quality to other issues or opportunities detected by the authors.
• Their attention to environmental and socioeconomic durability and sustainability in such a way as to enhance habitability and energy efficiency, offer solutions of quality to considerations of accessibility, and foster the use of traditional building techniques and materials that are reusable and characteristic of the area so as to contribute to the local and regional economy and to reductions in the future generation of waste and emissions.
• Their suitability to the context in which they are to be implemented along with their accordance with local cultural heritage and their ability to enrich it harmoniously.
• The degree to which they give continuity to local traditions of architecture and urban design, helping to preserve or enhance a sense of place.
• Their impact on the community: their likely degree of acceptability to local people and their ability, if the proposal can finally be implemented, to generate more and better-quality employment in the region’s building trades.
• The ability of their possible implementation to foster continuity, giving rise to new improvement projects, and to become a model for projects in other communities.
• Their viability in technical and economic terms, and the ratio between the investment that their implementation would entail and the benefits involved for the community and its cultural heritage.

On agreeing to participate in this competition, the winning entrants transfer to the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation the rights to utilize, reproduce, exhibit, and publish the proposals submitted to the competition in accordance with intellectual property law, valid with national and international scope and without limitation in terms of time or means, including, as appropriate, variations in detail as required or desirable for publicizing and promoting this competition.

The Traditional Building Cultures Foundation may publicize all or part of the projects, as considered appropriate, through exhibitions and publications in physical or digital format or online. Such publicity shall always refer to the source and authorship of the projects in the case of the winning proposals and maintain anonymity in the case of unrewarded ones.

The authors shall retain intellectual property over their projects. The projects submitted to the competition may not be used for purposes other than those referred by these rules, and may not in any event be used as material or as a basis for the preparation of other projects by architects or practitioners other than the respective proposal authors.

Participants in this competition should respect the confidential nature of any information to which they may have access in connection therewith.