Design Competitions, anyone?

There is a time in the life of an designer where he'd be tempted to participate in the chaos of a design competition. I know. Some designers would say it is a complete waste of time because no small time designer/architect win in design competitions, anyway. And design competitions don't pay the bills because they are non-billable works. and while waiting for the results, you might as well recite the Novena, or else where will you get the money to pay for your fees and your staff's salary from doing something that does not convert to actual cash?

In November 2010 Keith tried his luck at an open design competition. He worked (and still does) alone, he worked (and still does the same) at home.He learned about the open design housing competition in the middle of the year. He only had few months to conceptualize, work on his design, do his models, render and squeeze in income-earning works in between. Despite these nuances, he said he enjoyed working on his competition entry because he didn't have difficult clients (who refuse to pay the equivalent of his expertise) to deal with.

His concept was loosely based on Aravena's housing projects with Elemental, particularly those built in Monterrey, Mexico . He has been fascinated with the concept of slums renovation and with providing quality socialized housing for the urban poor. He has seen the Aravena housing projects years before and was greatly impressed. Of course, there is the issue of sustainability, project life span vis a vis its cost, access to and possibility of having urban gardens, pedestrian and PWD considerations--those things combined resulted to this:

First board. 

Then the "He" became a "We" because, in the middle of all the chaos, i decided to step up and volunteered to do the legwork. Legwork is not at all classy, given my level of expertise. But since I am the one who have worked in an actual office and have dealt with impossible bosses, Keith surmised that i am the expert to handle the job. My first assignment was to look for a good material to use as boards. That was easy because i have artists friends and they use boards for their exhibits, too. Foam board was the answer. First time we went to the supply store, the boards were out of stock. Second time, it was still out of stock. We look for them at other stores but most sold only oversized A3 foam boards. Back to the original store. We were lucky the third time.

My second job was to look for a good material to print the outputs on. That was also easy. But no--turns out that my material of choice was way to expensive and we were already few hundreds over the budget. We expect more unnecessary spendings as the deadline gets closer so I had to look for cheaper alternatives. It didn't turn out to be an easy job as our little small town City lacked facilities that print A1 boards in singular copies. And no, tarpaulin is not even in the shortlist. It's tacky.

It didn't help that during that time, at the peak of all the renderings and the modellings, our city decided to ration its power supply. We get black outs that last for 8 hours a day. Keith had to revise his sleeping schedule--work at night and sleep during the day, because it is during the day when we get blackouts. He did this for two months.

And there's an Alfredogs band tour in Cebu a week before the deadline that we have to prepare for.

(OH! Alfredo! He directed the zarzuela and they had posters to promote it.)

We finally found it, MEJ, owned by Alfredo's friends, but not after getting lost and having to walk back 500 meters under the noon sun, because Alfredo was bad at giving directions. Lucky word that helped us find our way back to the print shop was "kaplog", which i didn't understand, and to which Keith replied, "Sandpipers."

Before MEJ, we scoured the malls, the print shops that were not in the malls, and computer/internet shops that have printing services. We even tried the tarpaulin printing shops but none of them print boards in A1. Even MEJ didn't have it, but oversized A3 at (VERY CHEAP!!!) PHP80.00 per page. The very helpful owner suggested we split the A1 layout to 4 sheets and just align them together in the board to form the whole A1 picture. Smart, if the printing is good--which really is; was even beyond my expectation. The "splitted" picture looked better than what we expected. Of course, it would have been best to have it in seamless A1.

This was the concept. The perspective was the second try and up to this day, i admit i still prefer the first render.
But i am a luddite when it comes to what a good perspective is so it doesn't matter.

Third job is to look for cheapest courier that can deliver the boards to the exhibit area in one piece. This one is really very easy, although the first courier we asked quoted a heart-attack-inducing PHP2,500 (i think) for 3 very light A1 foam boards to ship to Metro Manila. They barely weigh a kilo and we had to pay PHP2,500. LBC charged us about PHP450.00 (i think) for the whole thing. The 2,500 lady price-quoter was a real dud.

In between the looking for a shop to have it printed and packing it for actual shipping, there's the manual lay-outing.

The adhesive on the boards will not be enough to hold the four pieces of separate sheets altogether, seamlessly. Keith and I were imaging that in the middle of the judging, a sheet would fall off, its corners would curl or fold or just refuse to stick to the foam board. The boards would look awful and no great MEJ printing quality would be enough to redeem the bad impression.

Saran wrap. Yes, the answer might lie in the clingy, thin plastic wrap that is popular by the brand name Saran. So while awkwardly assembling the whole thing on our 1.2 square meters plastic dining table, i sent Keith to the nearest grocey store to get some cling wrap. He came home disappointed as the only available dimensions of the plastic wrap is again, way way way small to cover the whole A1 board in one seamless piece, similar to a vaccuum-wrapped food.

"It does not matter. It's a cling wrap, it will cling and when it does, the whole thing will look like they're wrap in one piece of plastic," I assured him.

But NO--plastic wrap does not cling to paper; it only clings to its fellow plastic and when it does, it loves to make those little crumpled plastic look that is terribly untidy looking and unprofessional. By all means, my idea of plastic wrap assembly must be abandoned. IMMEDIATELY.

Keith was already profusely sweating from the humidity in the house and from our 4 year-old who also wanted to participate in our mega-board-wrapping-project. We're not halfway done yet.

Then he stopped going around the table and the boards. Paused. Stared. The whole place was a mess.

"We send it without the plastic."
"What?"
"We send it without the plastic wrap."
"Why? What if it falls off during the exhibition?"
"It will not fall off. I will reinforce it with clear glue. We use the plastic wrap for protection during shipment."

I believe Keith knows his materials better than I so I did as told. And because that plastic wrap assembly was frankly the last of bulb-lighting ideas i had for the day.

I have 30 minutes to finish the written statement for the entry before we mail the boards. It was one of those things i regret because had i been quick to assume my role in the competition, Keith and I could have had more in-depth discussions about the project, i could have participated in the conceptualization and the brain-storming. I could have researched more and produced a better statement for the project. The only thing i did before this whole printing-packing thing was comment on his renderings. and suggest what better vine to use for insulation.

Keith asked me again if i want my name on the entry form. I thought the entry form looked lonely with just his name on it. So i said Yes, and asked him to put "Research Assistant" on the description.

The Elements.

We all learn from our mistakes the next thing we did after we submitted the boards was send out kid to my parents, prepare for Cebu, enjoyed Cebu with friends, went home happy, and looked for the next possible competition to join once again.

At least we now know where MEJ is.