Will the competition provide existing building dimensions or adaptable properties for teams to base their designs on?

While this competition strives to showcase designs that are feasible, producing construction-ready plans is not the desired outcome. We instead hope to amplify the potential of adaptive reuse and raise public awareness about creative solutions to the housing crisis.

With that in mind:

• Participants are invited to choose any real building, public or private, as the foundation for their concept. It is encouraged that designers choose a property that interests them or feel emblematic of the adaptive reuse potential in our community.
• Designers may be able to find building plans and records through the City of Bellingham’s online database. If specific dimensions are not available for a building, designers can make reasonable assumptions about the building’s dimensions, based on the age, construction type, systems, and layout. Participant’s designs and accompanying narratives should speak to the magnitude of interventions that one might expect rather than details in numbers.

Our judging will focus on:

• The clarity and creativity of the adaptive reuse concept.
• How well the proposal connects to housing challenges and the surrounding neighborhoods.
• The designer’s ability to tell a compelling story about how a space could be transformed.

Download our FAQ document