The Young Architects Studio Competition (YASC), a part of Design Pittsburgh, is a competition to engage our young and emerging professionals and students, by challenging them to find innovative ways to approach a regional design problem. Now in its fourth year, the YASC was created for young architects who have been out of school for no more than 10 years. New this year, the competition is expanding to include architecture undergraduates. Entrants may or may not be licensed, and may or may not be members of the AIA or AIAS.
This year’s competition is titled The Great Allegheny Passage, which is the name of the 150-mile, multi-use trail connecting Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. through the Appalachian Mountains, utilizing easements of abandoned railroad tracks that ultimately create a non-motorized network 334.5-miles in length.
With this reclamation and renewal of land, which once housed the corridors of our industrial past, unique urban and architectural opportunities exist for Pittsburgh in the 21st century. The challenge for this competition is to devise a creative program for the establishment of a “place” or “places” along the GAP trail within the City of Pittsburgh geographic limits. These may be trailheads, overlooks, rest stops, or other conceptual ideas proposed by the designer. The submissions will be judged anonymously by a jury, and awards will be given to honor the most successful design during the 2013 Design Awards Ceremony.
Read more about the criteria and requirements here.