Design Competition

To register you will be asked to fill out a form with your details. You will receive a confirmation email acknowledging your registration. In this email you will be provided with a registration number. You will need to include this number on all documentation that is submitted. 

Prior to the submission deadline you will receive 2 automated email reminders advising you of competition deadlines. One at 4 weeks and one at 1 week prior to submission. Along with your registration number you will also receive a link to a dropbox folder. This is where you will be required to upload your entry. This will need to be uploaded before 5pm (NZ time) on Friday 18th November, 2022. 

All submissions will be reviewed by our esteemed panel of judges. We ask that your registration number be in a clearly visible location as this should be the only identifiable reference for your submission. Please do not include your name, voice or face etc in your submitted documentation for categories 1 (professionals) or 2 (students). This is in order to maintain as anonymous a judging process as possible. Where there is a conflict of interest judges will not comment on a particular entry. For category 3, If identity is crucial to how you respond to this challenge you will not be penalised.  

For categories 1 and 2, you are required to include in your submission:

1. A Project Title and written abstract describing your concept and how it meets the brief 400 words max 
2. A maximum of five high resolution A3 pages  (420 x 297mm Landscape orientation) or 2 x A2 pages (420 x 594mm). Image files should be no larger than 100MB each. Submission of sketches, illustrations, CAD models, scans of paintings or other artworks as well as photos of physical models, and links to animation and videos  can be included as well. If you would like to submit outside of these mediums, please contact NUWAO to discuss (maibritt.pedersen.zari@aut.ac.nz) . 
3. Your registration number should be included on all submitted work (no logos or recognisable graphics please). 
4. Your total submission must not exceed 500 MB.

Please note: By submitting any work to this competition you are agreeing to us exhibiting / publishing your work (with credit of course) and you are certifying that you own the copyright to all images, text etc. for third party online and digital publication. Credits for images must be supplied. You are responsible for obtaining consent to enter from all team members involved with any submission. This includes photographers and people in images / video. This consent must be obtained before you submit any work.

This design competition will help us to understand the issues that need to be addressed in these specific urban areas of Oceania  and to gauge existing understandings and approaches to the issues, while also capturing the collective imagination regarding how we might creatively adapt to climate change. Our team’s focus areas are Port Vila (Vanuatu), Apia (Samoa), Tarawa (Kiribati), Te Awakairangi and Ōtepoti (Aotearoa New Zealand) and we particularly encourage you to focus your designs on one or more of these areas. Background information on these areas will be provided on the NUWAO website. We will, however,  accept entries related to any urban setting in any other Pacific Island nation, including Aotearoa New Zealand (see map above). 

CONSIDERATIONS

• Design: Optimising design to create a future that cares for nature and provides for future generations. Design strategies that can help reintegrate nature in our cities by transforming urban spaces into liveable, productive, and biodiverse systems.
• Build: May include urban masterplans, networks and systems, environmental plans, infrastructure, streetscapes, large or small scale landscapes, tourism developments, housing ideas, urban agriculture systems etc.
• Adapt: Nature-based climate adaptation solutions to create, adapt, or regenerate interconnected hydrological, biological, and social ecologies. Successful adaptation requires careful consideration of the local context and participatory “bottom-up” co-design and implementation with local communities.
• Perform: Using healthy ecosystems and biodiversity and crucial ecosystem services, as a key link between healthy ecosystems and human wellbeing in urban environments.
• Share: thriving, just communities that nurture peoples in diverse, unique places through co-design and participatory design.
• Learn: Create opportunities for learning, engagement and research in culturally enriching ecosystems.

The geographic scope for this competition is focused on urban areas of Oceania. This map defines our understanding of ‘Oceania’ as the combined Pacific Island nations of Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia.

Figure 1. Regions of Oceania. Source: Adapted from Australian National University (CC License).

Specifically, sites in the following countries: Aotearoa New Zealand, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Hawaii, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rapanui, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna.

NUWAO

The Nature-based Urban design for Wellbeing and Adaptation in Oceania (NUWAO) project is made up of a diverse multidisciplinary team, and is funded by a New Zealand Government Marsden grant. Our aim is to develop nature-based urban design solutions, rooted in Indigenous knowledges that support climate change adaptation, individual and community wellbeing in different contexts across Aotearoa and Oceania. Our specific geographic focus includes: Te Awakairangi (Lower Hutt) and the Otago coastal region in Te Wai Pounamu, Apia in Samoa, Tarawa in Kiribati, and Port Vila in Vanuatu. Special consideration will be given to submissions for sites within these particular areas. Our hope is that through this design competition we can learn from your innovative design solutions to understand the issues that need to be addressed and to gauge existing understandings and approaches to the issues at hand while also capturing the collective imagination about how we might creatively adapt to climate change from a diverse range of people and perspectives.

Climate change

Climate change is generated by the choices that people have made, especially  over the last 70 years. It is human influence that has warmed the climate at an unprecedented rate resulting in some difficult future realities. We are facing major issues such as the threat of sea level rise, coastal erosion, storm surges, groundwater inundation, temperature rise, and extreme weather and flooding events. This is in a context of rising inequities and other social factors. These pressures of climate change and urbanisation globally are detrimental to ecosystems and human wellbeing, particularly when looking at vulnerable communities. This needs to be urgently addressed now, particularly in the Pacific. The NUWAO Nature-based Urban Climate Adaptation for Wellbeing Rooted in Indigenous Knowledge Design Competition is a call to designers, urban and development professionals, students, rangatahi / youth, and the general public to add to this research by drawing upon the collective imagination and knowledge of Oceania. We are looking for future-focussed nature-based solutions that seek to rethink our urban environments, generate innovative visions, methodologies, and solutions in response to today’s climate challenges, especially in ways which center, celebrate, and draw upon traditional local knowledges.

Nature-based Solutions Climate change

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as “actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems, that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits”. More simply, NbS are solutions to societal challenges that involve working with nature. They aim to enhance the resilience of ecosystems, their capacity for renewal and the provision of ecosystem services. While NbS are an important strategy to use to adapt to climate change in the Pacific we must also look to Indigenous ecological knowledge, based on the intricate and intimate observation and understanding of complex behaviours within our natural and physical world. A knowledge base that is deeply connected and guided by relationships to the environment. From understanding the cycles of the ebbing moon, natural rhythms of the passing seasons, movement of the stars, weather patterns, ecological and cultural systems. The rights and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples are intimately linked with ecological and climate health in the Pacific. The NUWAO approach understands this and draws upon it.