The Fairy Tales Competition is one of the largest creative competition in the design industry, with more than 1,200 contestants from 65 countries participating in this year's second iteration of the annual event. Started by Blank Space, an online architecture platform and the brainchild of Matthew Hoffman and Francesca Giuliani, the competition asks participants to conceive original architectural projects in parallel with fictional stories. Among the jury were sculptor Anish Kapoor and John Hoke, VP of global design at Nike.
This year's winning entry is Empty, by Zigeng Wang, a student at Princeton University, who depicts vivid images in a post-industrial world. In second place is Beautifully Banal, by Alexander Culler and Danny Travis, a CAD illustration matched with what could have been a stale scenario. Finally, 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. Screenland is visually vibrant and accompanied by a humorous narrative about a pixel, while CTRL C CTRL ME depicts a cynical world in which business and technology dictate the life of a shrinking architect.
The winning entries will be featured in Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells a Story Volume 2, a book designed by Bruce Mau Design.
