Bering Strait – Interconnection and communication

About the competition

The Bering project is a large scale project by which railroad systems and ocean driveways of world-wide nations are to be connected right at the Bering Strait between North America and Eurasia Continents. Through this unprecedented projects, east and west hemisphere can be link with this connection which will recover the discontinuity of nation, human and culture. The promoter hopes that a long-pending hostility and conflict could be cleared up by the communication obtained as a result, and thus, mutual cooperation can be realized.

The Foundation for Peace and Unification (FPU) is announcing the International ideas competition for the Bering project approved by the International Union fo Architects (UIA) in order to let the world know about this intention and to stimulate their interest and participation in the competition.

Results (competition over) :

First prize : Doomed Archipelago : Taller 301 Julian Restrepo, Pablo Forero, Manuela Mosquera, Susana Somoza and Tomas Jaramillo, (Colombia and Venezuela)

Second prize :

Bering Strait : Rachdi Manal, architecture OFF (France)
Bridge the memory : Jaeik Sim, Hyunwook Woo, Daekwon Park, Jonghyuk Lim, Dongjin Lee (Republic of Korea)
Imprinted time : Jitaek Shim, Sung Hoon Chung, Seung Youp Lee, Seung Hwan Shim, Sung Gi Park (Republic of Korea)

Third prize :

Entanglement : Evelyn Alonso, Sara Sarmiento, Manuel Perez (Spain)
Nebula : Marek Rytych, Krzysztof Kryska, Malgorzata Piotrowska, Pasternak Karol, Radek Tabor (Poland)

First prize in the Student Category :

Nature Must Colonize Human: Taegon Kim, SeongJae Lee, Joohui Son (Republic of Korea)

Second prize in the Student Category :

Gone with the Wind: Hyunil Oh, Jongwon Lee, Jaesuk Choi, Sangyoon Lee (Republic of Korea)
Rising Land: Jannik Duellmann, Philipp Lueffe, Pascal Maas (Germany)

Third prize in the Student Category :

Invisible Bridge: Hyungi Kim, Jihwan Moon, Tahn Shin, Sungyeol Choi, Hanbyul Rhee (Republic of Korea)
Solid Linking: Antoine Denieau (France)
Trans Bering Strait Tunnel & International Peace Park Memorial: Julian Huang, Vimal Mehta, James Petty, Hongtao Wei (United Kingdom & China)

Timetable :

Announcement of the competition : 10 February 2009
Opening of registration : 10 February 2009
Dissemination of design guidelines : 10 March 2009
Deadline for reception of competition queries : 24 March 2009
Posting of answers to queries on the website : 7 April 2009
Deadline for reception of registration : 10 April 2009
Submission deadline : 19 May 2009
Deadline for reception of posted entries by the promoter : 22 May 2009
Adjudication completed by : 27 May 2009
Announcement of the competition results : 29 May 2009

Keywords : Transformation

Competition results

First prize : Doomed Archipelago : Taller 301

Julian Restrepo, Pablo Forero, Manuela Mosquera, Susana Somoza and Tomas Jaramillo, (Colombia and Venezuela)

Second prize : Bering Strait.

Rachdi Manal, architecture OFF (France)

Second prize : Bridge the memory.

Jaeik Sim, Hyunwook Woo, Daekwon Park, Jonghyuk Lim, Dongjin Lee (Republic of Korea)

Second prize : Imprinted time.

Jitaek Shim, Sung Hoon Chung, Seung Youp Lee, Seung Hwan Shim, Sung Gi Park (Republic of Korea)

Third prize : Entanglement.

Evelyn Alonso, Sara Sarmiento, Manuel Perez (Spain)

Third prize : Nebula.

Marek Rytych, Krzysztof Kryska, Malgorzata Piotrowska, Pasternak Karol, Radek Tabor (Poland)

Theme and objectives

The Bering Strait is the place where the barrier of time, space, history and ideology are represented most dramatically. With this competition, the goal is to have an innovative idea of how this separation and alienation can be resolved with an architectural solution in an attempt of artificial connection. Furthermore, there could be a world highway running through a tunnel or a bridge constructed at the Bering, which can makes one-day living sphere. Thus, opening this way can lead to the peace of mankind by removing the barrier of human race, culture, religions and nations.

The proposition with the Bering project can be rephrased as an elimination of all the barriers like spatial disconnection of national borders and chronological disconnection of today and tomorrow.

The purpose of the competition is to provide comprehensive material which can serve as a basis for the drafting of further actual plan and for decision-making rather than to produce complete or final plans.

For more information, please visit the official website for the competition.

Key criteria

Here are the mains criteria for the participants to take under consideration for the evaluation :

A design proposal of a peace park and a connection structure using two islands, Big Diomede and Little Diomede Island, at Bering strait to symbolize the continuation of two continents.
An idea proposal of the technical method for the connection.

Also, the design proposal should stress out the fact that two continents are to be connected. The participants should express this meaning of connection in their work. Therefore, a work should show visually and physically the link of these two islands with represent the overcome of time gap and nation’s border set by human.

The promoter of the competition also encourages various ideas for the connection. It is not a perfectly realistic technical solution that the promoter is seeking for but, certain level of technical solution for a connection structures like a tunnel or a bridge is welcome to be included in the design proposal. For a reference, the connection line indicated in the design guideline can be adjusted or re-established because it is a virtual one.

Jury Members

Bruno Stagno, Costa Rica;
Rudy Ricciotti, France;
Craig Dykers, USA and Norway;
Roisin Heneghan, Ireland;
Hani Rashid, USA;
Jennifer Lee, USA;
Per Olaf Fjeld, Norway;
Karl Ganser, Germany;
Bonnie Maples, Canada;
Andrei Kaftanov, Russia.

Eligibility

This competition is open to all licensed architects worldwide, groups of architects, or teams of multi-disciplinary professionals including urban designers and engineers with a licensed architect steam leader.

However, this competition is also open to students of architecture with a professor or a student as team leader. In case of student participation, student registration form and letter of design studio professor’s consent should be submitted.

Results

Competition closed. Results announced on May 2009

COMPETITION RESULTS

Reference documents

Competition Brief