Two student competitions - designs of passive houses

KNAUF INSULATION, spol. s r. o. announces a student competition in collaboration with the charitable organization POSRENNA. The task for the contestants is to design a family house in a passive or even better standard for a specific location in Krupka near Teplice. Students must prepare the competition project under the guidance of expert consultants from universities or designers. Registration for the competition is required by October 26, and competition proposals must be submitted by January 15, 2008.
Despite clearly defined evaluation criteria, the lack of specific names in the jury is a somewhat negative aspect in the competition conditions ("Evaluation of the project will be conducted by a professional committee composed of representatives from technical universities, government authorities, and a representative of the competition organizer."). The system of rewarding competition works is also not entirely clear, as the winning project is awarded 25,000 CZK, but in addition, an unspecified number of special prizes of 10,000 CZK will be awarded based on various criteria, the number of which will depend on the number of registered competitors. Additionally, the organizer reserves the right to reduce or not award prizes in the case of insufficient quality of the proposals or a low number of competitors. Thus, the competition does not meet the requirements of the ČKA competition rules (which contestants are, however, warned about in the conditions).
More information about the competition and competition materials can be found here>

Multi-Comfort-House School – A New Concept for Learning

Another "passive" student competition, this time a two-round international one, is announced by Saint-Gobain Isover.
The theme of the competition is the design of a school building for 200-300 children, which will meet the parameters of passive buildings. The building itself should contain both traditional classrooms as well as spaces for modern teaching methods.
The first round of the competition is announced as a national round, in which 5 best proposals will be selected. Three of them will be rewarded (1,500, 1,000, and 750 EUR), and their authors along with their teachers will be invited to Dubrovnik, where they will have the chance to defend their work in an open discussion. In this "second round", however, it will not be about selecting the best work, but only about exchanging experiences among the participants, their teachers, and other experts.
The national round will take place until March 2008, and the international congress in Dubrovnik will occur between June 1 and 4, 2007.
The source of information about the competition is the international conditions, which were made available to students of the Brno FA VUT without specifying several passages that differ across countries (e.g., the date of the end of the competition or the national secretary). For example, here> you can find the competition conditions in English intended for students from schools in Latvia (only the passages highlighted in blue are different). One can only hope that the Czech representation of Isover and especially representatives of individual schools will soon supplement and publish the Czech conditions.