Desall Design Challenge for Sustainable Electric Substation with a Prize of €40.000

Enel Grids is calling on designers, architects, engineers, or inventors to reimagine its most iconic assets: Primary Substations!! The company is looking for a new design concept for the construction of this innovative sustainable building system that must have innovative features in terms of design, materials, and construction, incorporating principles of sustainability within a circular design approach and better fitting into the urban landscape.

Prizes include a financial reward of up to 40.000€ and the chance to work with Enel Grids. 

• This Challenge is reserved for engineers, architects, designers, startups, scaleups, and SMEs, and industrials incorporated in any country, acting both as natural and/or legal persons. For more info visit challenge page.
• The purpose of this challenge is the creation of new sustainable architectural concepts dedicated to Primary substations. The primary goal of the challenge is the creation of a sustainable architectonic modular system that allows a high degree of versatility and replicability, a necessary requirement to adapt the buildings and architectural elements to the different contexts of use present in the territory. This system must be able to house all the required electrical equipment of the Primary Substations and at the same time shall improve the visual, functional, and spatial impact of these installations and their surrounding areas.
• Given the great variety of environments wherein the primary substations will be installed, the challenge provides four case-study sites to adopt as contexts of use for the development of the proposed solutions:

1. urban contexts (large municipalities);
2. semi-urban (small municipalities) or peripheral contexts;
3. rural contexts, inland;
4. rural contexts, coastal.

• The competitors are asked to design architectural solutions for the visual impact of the technical area of the primary substation and, at the same time, to rethink the relation between the primary substation and the context of use, with the aim of avoiding or minimizing its environmental and social impact. The proposals should reimagine the primary substations as a whole, with a design consistent throughout all its components. The new design should be centered on the following key aspects:

1. Project modularity and replicability
2. Visual and sustainability impact
3. Communication
4. Sustainable materials and renewable energy
5. Innovative initiatives for Development Areas
6. E-mobility promotion
7. Social inclusion
8. Lighting

Selection Criteria and Jury:

Proposals will be assessed by a prestigious jury of international experts in the fields of architecture, design, and sustainability, including:

• Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel: an international architecture and interior design studio.
• Arup: a London Based multinational engineering consulting firm focused on sustainable built environments.
• Legambiente: an Italian non-profit environmental organization.
• CIID: Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.
• EnSiel: an Italian consortium of Universities that operate on electric systems and facilities.
• IED Istituto Europeo di Design.
• Francesco Cascino Art Consultant.

About Desall:

Desall is an open innovation and crowdsourcing platform that, through design contests, connects companies and private clients with a worldwide community of creative talents.

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