July 16, 2010 1:00 PM CDT

Potomac Valley Brick Launches 2nd Annual BrickStainable Design Competition

By Elizabeth Johnson

Teams of architects, engineers, material scientists, landscape architects, ecologists, students and others have another opportunity to design an sustainable building using clay brick as the primary material for BrickStainable Design Competition. Thanks to the success of the inaugural BrickStainable 2009 competition, Potomac Valley Brick will hold the competition once again this year.

BrickStainable competition is held in pursuit of design solutions that exploit the unique properties of brick masonry construction as well as seek new ideas in the development of this age old building material. Once again, this year’s competition has two categories.

• Integrated Building Design Competition: The assignment’s building will be set in an urban location. Like last year, the competition seeks integrative design solutions that exploit the thermal qualities of brick masonry construction to create a passively heated and cooled building. The target: Net Zero.


• Technical Design Competition: Design a single element of a building that provides a sustainable solution to real-world environmental challenges.

Jurors will look for evidence of the project’s performance and encourage the use of BIM, energy, solar and day light modeling software.

Potomac Valley Brick will award a $10,000 grand prize and $7,500 grand prize in the Building Design and Technical Design categories, respectively. Up to three honorable mention winners in each category will be awarded $2,000 per team. All winners will be flown to Washington, DC for the awards celebration on March 31, 2011 at the National Building Museum.

“Designers are working on some really interesting and innovative products and designs in the real world as a result of last year’s competition,” says Alan Richardson, president of Potomac Valley Brick. “I’m eager to see what comes out of this year’s competition.”

In the first competition, BrickStainable received 90 registrations from 17 countries and awarded six prizes to the top entries.

Registration is open July 15th through November 15th and competition entries are due December 15th. Competition requirements, past award winners and award ceremony photos are available at www.BrickStainable.com.

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About the Author

Elizabeth Johnson is the Director of Public Relations and Content Development at Frost Miller Group. Elizabeth holds a degree in advertising from Penn State and maintains memberships in PRSA and IAEE.