Metropolis, the leading magazine for architecture and design professionals, announces the theme for its annual Next Generation® Design Competition, in partnership with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). The challenge is to take an ordinary GSA office building in Los Angeles, apply immense skill and creative energy, and GET ZERO – Zero Environmental Impact.
GSA, one of the world’s biggest landlords, is being challenged by its Administrator Martha Johnson to achieve a Zero Environmental Footprint for its existing office buildings. She’s likened this challenge to the Apollo Space Project of the 1960s (the same decade when hundreds of new, modernist government buildings, like the one in downtown LA, were built). GSA’s colossal existing stock of buildings, over 9,600 of them in the U.S., poses an even bigger challenge: How can forward thinking-design transform backwards-looking buildings?
NEXT GENERATION 2011: GET ZERO aims to supply the firepower with design ideas that GSA can use to further its aim, using the 8-story building at 300 North Los Angeles Street (in the Civic Center area of Los Angeles), as the test case for entrants