Tasmeem Doha 2008 Student Design Competition

Give me shelter—changing lives, changing spaces

Every year, the Tasmeem Committee holds a design competition to give students from around the world an opportunity to win travel and accommodation to attend the conference and pre-conference charette. The five winning entries are shown on the following pages.

This year, students addressed the problem of shelter. One of the many crossroads the world is facing is the changing paradigm of living spaces. The population is increasing while available land and resources are decreasing. In 35 years, the population of the world will increase by two and a half billion to nine billion persons. The Middle East is the fastest growing area. It is estimated that countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia will need to build 150,000 housing units every year until 2020 to accommodate their projected housing needs. Other parts of the world, however, are experiencing a decrease in population. In Seoul, South Korea, for example, the birthrate has dropped 30 percent since 1993, in part due to the lack of room for children in the cramped high-rise apartments. The way in which living spaces are experienced is changing as well. With people spending more time working, the traditional boundaries of work and home no longer apply.

Students were instructed to consider their own environment, define a problem and develop a solution, thinking beyond the obvious solution of designing a dwelling. They were asked to consider:

1. Issues of self-identity in individual dwellings, group identity in building small neighborhood communities and identities of uniqueness in cities and countries.
2. Cultures at the crossroads of great change and what can be done to support and energize them to play an active and creative role in the nature of their development.
3. The environmental and personal costs on communities on the verge of great change.
4. Utopian dreams of what may be.

This year we had our largest group of students competing for the awards, with over 90 entries from 11 countries. The entries were judged blind by a group of five jurors consisting of faculty and administration from VCUQatar, plus a professional in the design field. The faculty judges were selected from the disciplines of fashion, interior and graphic design by the VCUQatar department chairs. The jurors were:

Ruth Beals, Interim Department Chair, Interior Design, VCUQatar
Donald Earley, Assistant Professor, Fashion Design, VCUQatar
Levi Hammett, Assistant Professor, Graphic Design, VCUQatar
Ian Silverstein, Founder, Creative Action Design
Allyson Vanstone, Dean, VCUQatar

The winning five entries (in alphabetical order) are:

Robert Barghout, American University of Science and Technology—Beirut Lebanon
Instructor: Germaine Ghorayeb

Jennifer Blackburn & Barbara Lundberg, Utah State University—Logan Utah, USA
Instructor: Darrin Brooks

Meg Norris, Cornish College of the Arts—Seattle Washington, USA
Instructors: Claudia Meyer-Newman

Nadia Suhail Rana, Beaconhouse National University—Lahore, Pakistan
Instructor: Gwendolyn Kulick

Stefani Swiatkowski, Cornish College of the Arts—Seattle Washington, USA
Instructor: Emilie Burnham