Competition: How cool is your stool: Reshaping the City

TED announces to open a competition titled How Cool is Your Stool: Reshaping the City. The following presents the guideline of this competition.

How cool is Your Stool: Reshaping the City competition is taking place in the context of American cities under extremely severe aesthetic predicaments. Following the recent events in North Africa, we want to revisit Le Corbusier's question: Architecture or Revolution? Architecture carves an irreversible first impression on the culture of cities; we can no longer endure the way that banality of our skylines misrepresents the spirit of our times. This competition is proposed in conjunction with TED x 25th Ward in Chicago under the same title, Architecture or Revolution? We are rewarding the 25 winners based on how cool their stools are — the winners will construct their designs, exhibit the work with the speakers, and sit on it during the event. The will be laid out like Koolhaas' City of Captive Globe in the first rows of the audience.
Objective: City of Archi-Characters
The Cool Stools are scaled models of architectural massing. They can be thought of as figural beings with personalities. In other words, the re-shaped "city" will be a collection of archi-characters.
The Challenge: Cool StoolsThe challenge is to make the cool stools sturdy enough to sit on during the TEDx25thWard event. How does one tell a story with one image? The difficulty of this project is calibrating complexity of thought into one single massing. As well, in keeping with the world-class quality that TED and TEDx upkeeps, we are looking for the caliber of work that can make history with us in Architecture or Revolution.
Design Constraints:

1. The Cool Stool must be designed within an 18"Wx18"Lx20"H volume.

1. Must be an impressionable archi-character, icon or a legible figure at one glance. The design should refrain from simplistic 2-D extrusion of any kind. It is suggested that it be a project that can be easily nicknamed — the sphinx, "the inverted Wedding Cake', "the Duck", "the contortionist", etc? Generic boxes or conventional stools will not be considered

1. Although massing is the desired effect, contestants are allowed to use color for the façade. The surface treatment shoul no be overpower the form/posture of the archi-character. Please remember to keep to the parto-whole relationship

1. Though cool, the entry should still function as a stool  This project demands the designers to design something formally challenging and structurally sound.

1. Contestants are expected to manage their own "budget", schedule and constructability. The competition will assist up yo $5° per winning entry to be reimbursed with valued receipts.

For detailed information: HERE.