Established in honor of the School of Architecture’s former director, Max Robinson, the MAX_minimum Design Competition is a recurring annual design competition meant to encourage the greatest impact on the design environment with the least possible means. The aim of these projects is to leverage the potential of design thinking to creatively impact the College of Architecture + Design, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the state of Tennessee. First and foremost amongst the project goals, however, is the development of conceptual and pragmatic design excellence within the College of Architecture + Design’s student body.
2015 Competition Theme
Design is frequently couched in terms of what is necessary, what is required, and what is asked for, requested,or solicited from a client or user group. The 2015 MAX_min competition looks to divert authority away from these “proper” or “sanctioned” mechanisms for justifying design ambition. This year MAX_min asks: What might be achieved when design is delivered without such authoritative permission? What possiblities can be captured or revealed through acts of design that are unsolicited?
The campus at the University of Tennessee Knoxville is witnessing one of the most prolific periods of construction in its history. While very few of us have been asked to get involved as designers, MAX_min gives College of Architecture + Design students the opportunity to make a projective claim on the campus by imagining a series of unsolicited projects. While unsolicited, these designs are nevertheless vested with power as they hold the potential to disrupt normative channels for project initiation, delivery, and reception. MAX_min asks interdisciplinary teams of design students to work collaboratively on design concepts for our campus that are unsolicited, unwarranted, and unendorsed – projects we were not asked to do, but which stand to supplement, and potentially subvert, the conventional, normative, and expected channels by which the built environment is designed and constructed.
