In his forthright and insightful essay, designer/author/Doors of Perception director John Thackara discusses problems with today’s design completions and offers up some compelling suggestions for change.

The San Diego Architectural Foundation (SDAF) wants to know what you think makes San Diego’s architecture and design blossom – or stink, and is again soliciting public nominations through August 31 for projects to be considered for this year’s Orchids & Onions Awards. All San Diegans are encouraged to take a few moments to have their say about what they view as the good, the bad and the ugly in categories including Architecture, Historic Preservation, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, and Miscellaneous; which covers just about everything in-between. By uploading a few photos on the SDAF’s Orchids and Onions website, along with your rationalization, you can be part of cultivating a more thoughtfully designed San Diego. More competition description after the break.

Supported by Architects Southwest, the 2011 Zombie Safe House Competition is an annual design competition focused on creating the best safe house for a zombie apocalypse.

STREET WORKS is a competition to create temporary installations that transform under-utilised public spaces into vibrant places. An initiative of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) NSW, STREET WORKS invites you to re-imagine spaces in the City of Sydney as dynamic, innovative and sustainable temporary public places that will bring people together in unique ways.

The participants should take into consideration the advances in technology, the exploration of sustainable systems, and the establishment of new urban and architectural methods to solve economic, social, and cultural problems of the contemporary city including the scarcity of natural resources and infrastructure and the exponential increase of inhabitants, pollution, economic division, and unplanned urban sprawl. More information on the competition’s official website.

This open ideas competition invites practicing architects, architecture students and designers to design an Academic Interchange for the University of Bremen, Germany. The Academic Interchange is envisioned as an incubator for interdisciplinary collaborations and international relations for academics at the university.

Elements that can also be composed into an “urban furniture” module with innovative functional and volumetric variations which will meet the needs and integrate the different possible functions required by citizens in their use of public space. True design objects, conceived for the cities of today and the foreseeable future.

The prominent waterfront of St. Petersburg, Florida, active since the late 19th century, will be host to an international design competition to replace the current landmark pier with a new, iconic pier structure. Interested parties must register for the competition by July 8, 2011. Submission of the Statement of Qualifications will be due on July 19, 2011.

The Chair in Landscape and Environmental Design at University of Montreal (CPEUM) is pleased to officially launch an international ideas competition in urban design YUL-MTL : Moving Landscapes. The international ideas competition aims to reinvent the landscapes that highlight Montreal’s international gateway corridor linking Montreal-Trudeau International Airport (YUL) to its downtown area (MTL) along Autoroute 20.

The deadline for submitting the projects for the International Competition for the Urban General Plan of the Rio 2016 Olympic Park has been expanded. Now, the projects can be delivered until July 28, 2011 and the results will be announced on August 15, 2011.

The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and HP are pleased to announce the 4th Advanced Architecture Contest, on the theme of CITY-SENSE: Shaping our environment with real-time data.

The Finnish capital Helsinki is undergoing the busiest phase of development in the city’s history. Whole new districts are emerging in sites vacated from harbours and other industrial uses. As a key part of the development, the City of Helsinki envisions landmark bridges – Kruunusillat (“crown bridges”) – for trams, cyclists and pedestrians. These bridges will connect a new maritime residential district with the inner city. The City invites the best architectural and engineering experts from all around the world for the task.

DesignByMany is a challenge based design technology community sponsored by HP and ArchDaily. Users post challenges to the community along with their design source files. The community can then post responses with their own source files to solve the challenge. They can also comment on the challenge and interact with other designers throughout the process.

The City of Helsinki is organizing an open international competition for ideas for Helsinki’s South Harbour. The entrants’ task is to create a comprehensive ideas plan for the South harbour that can be used as a basis for the future development of the area. The competition area is the entire shore area of the South Harbour. The central location of the South Harbour, the area’s cultural history and the passanger ports are essential parts of the city identity. The South Harbour is Helsinki’s marine national landscape. For more information, visit the competition’s official website.

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The New Zealand team from Victoria University of Wellington is the first-ever finalist from the Southern Hemisphere in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. The team is led by students from Victoria’s School of Architecture and is made up of students from a range of disciplines across the university. New Zealand is the first country in the world to see the light each day, this gave the house its name— First Light.

By integrating solar power systems in the roof or façades of buildings in an architecturally and technically sophisticated manner, architects can increase the awareness of both builders and the public regarding the possibilities for combining buildings with solar technology, and thus help renewable energies become more widespread. To increase acceptance and to foster awareness of this topic, the Bavarian Association for the Promotion of Solar Energy (SeV Bayern) is organising the competition “Building-Integrated Solar Technology2011”.

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The Brooklyn-based design and fabrication studio, FLATCUT_, in conjunction with the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (“ACADIA”), are pleased to announce this year’s award-winning jurors for The ACADIA 2011 Design + Fabrication Competition. The international competition asks designers to “push the boundaries of materials, minds, and machine” by exploring emergent modes of computational design. The competition focuses on unique material combinations and new fabrication techniques in creating forms in three categories: Furniture, Lighting and Partition. Winners will get the opportunity to actually fabricate their proposals this summer at FLATCUT_’s incredible 100,000sf warehouse.

In ancient times we lived with the Wilderness, fighting against its severity and its roughness, and receiving the benefits of its fertility. The wildness of nature was directly related to our lives. In our current age, we live in cities. A city is a large, man-made environment, in which we no longer think much about the power of nature, except when we are shocked by occasional natural disasters, such as storms, floods, droughts and earthquakes. However, we still instinctively recall the lives of our ancestors, and have complex feelings of fear and yearning for life in the Wilderness.