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The 2011 Essay Prize Competition

Essay Question Puhsarang Church, Kediri, Indonesia; ©Johannes Widodo

Stage 1: Enter Zen Garden ©John Kannenberg

Stage 2: Semifinalists Cloisters, Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, Kent, England ©tiny_packages

Stage 3: Finalists Festival at the Hotel de Ville, Paris, France ©Benjamin Clavan

Winning Essays Parthenon, Athenian Acropolis, Greece ©Jack G

Jury The Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque at the Qutab Minar and its Monuments, Delhi, India

Background

The Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Design Excellence endowment was established in the Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley to promote architecture as a social art through research, writing, and criticism: traditionally under-represented aspects of the architecture curriculum. Each year, the Prize Committee selects a topic important to the understanding of the interaction of people and the built world that becomes the focus of the Essay Competition. This year the topic is: Valuing the Sacred.

The Committee poses a Question on this website related to the topic. Students enrolled in any undergraduate architecture program throughout the world are invited to submit a 500-word essay proposal responding to the Question. Undergraduate architecture students may team up with undergraduates from Allied Arts and Social Sciences programs.

From the pool of essay proposals received, approximately 25 are selected by the Prize Committee as particularly promising. The 25 selected individual students, or student teams, become Semifinalists.

These Semifinalists are invited to submit a 2,500-word essay expanding on their proposals. A group of readers, composed of Committee members and invited colleagues, selects five-to-eight of the best essays and sends these Finalist essays to a jury of international academics and architects to select the winners.

At the conclusion of the Essay Competition submittals, all Semifinalists are also invited to submit for one of two BERKELEY PRIZE Fellowships: the Travel Fellowship, or the Architectural Design Fellowship. Details for each will be announced in the Spring, 2011. Past Fellowship Competition requirements, winning submissions, and follow-up reports by the winners are available to read here on the website.

Architectural history, theory and practice are rich with ideas and actual buildings that exemplify the importance of architecture as a social art. In addressing the Question posed by the BERKELEY PRIZE 2011 Essay Competition, you will consider this legacy and its relevance to you as future architects.

Dedication

The 2011 BERKELEY PRIZE is dedicated to all the student participants who explore the importance of the social art of architecture, and to those students whose responses have most impressed the Readers and Jurors.