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Winners of the 2015 Fairy Tales Competition

Today, I’m excited to announce the Blank Space 2015 Fairy Tales competition winners. In its second year, the competition received an overwhelming 1200 works of fiction and pictures that merge the worlds of fantasy and architecture from creatives in 65 countries.

The jury selected the 1st and 2nd place winners, along with a tie for 3rd place from all of the amazing entries, which was no small feat! The jury included me, Anish Kapoor, Sculptor; Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the MoMA; Juergen Mayer, Principal at J Mayer H Architects; Andy Hunter, Co-Founder of Electric Literature; Karim Rashid, Designer; Yves Behar, CEO of Fuseproject; John Hoke, VP of Global Design at Nike; Shohei Shigematsu, Partner at OMA; Hunter Tura, CEO of Bruce Mau Design; Matthew Hoffman and Francesca Giuliani, Co-Founders of Blank Space.

fairy-tales-2015-Empty_03

First Place goes to “Empty” by Zigeng Wang, a Masters student at Princeton University. Rich, detailed images of a post-industrial world illustrate an hyperrealistic, sci-fi-esque story about the great ethical and environmental dilemmas associated with globalization.

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fairy-tales-2015-Empty_05

Here’s an excerpt:

When I was young, there were only the outdoor world (enveloped in smog) and the indoor world (isolated by various air purifying equipment). Ever since that massive blackout, the government built many power plants on the upper stream of the river in order to meet the ever-growing need for electricity for that equipment. Gradually, the lower stream dried up and the ship moved on the dry land. But I took it for granted. After all, it transported air, which is as crucial to mankind as water is to fish. I don’t trust my father’s memory.

fairy-tales-2015-BeautifullyBanal_04

Second Place is awarded to “Beautifully Banal” by Alexander Culler and Danny Travis. A delightful style exercise, this story leverages CAD drawings to illustrate a mundane scenario in spectacular fashion: a fly is trapped inside an office building.

Screenland

Screenland

Third Place was a tie between “Screenland, By A Pixel” by Samantha Lee and Zhan Wang; and “CTRL C – CTRL ME” by Pauline Marcombe, Helene Marcombe, and Jay Robinson. In “Screenland, By A Pixel”, whimsical elaborations of a pixel, the atom of contemporary architecture creation, accompany a riff of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s “Flatland”. “CTRL C – CTRL ME” illustrates by way of metaphor what happens in the passage from inspiration to regulation. Colorful drawings narrate the story of a shrinking architect, becoming smaller and smaller under the pressure of technology and business rules.

CTRL C - CTRL ME

CTRL C – CTRL ME

The jury also awarded 11 honorable mentions. See more on the Black Space Project website.

The winning entries, along with the honorable mentions and other notable submissions, will be featured in Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells a Story Volume 2, which you can pre-order here www.blankspaceproject.com/book.

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.