Organizer 

University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

Curators: Sharon Haar, Olivier Peyricot, Anya Sirota

Location 

USA / Ann Arbor, Michigan (Exhibition venue: 2000 Bonisteel Blvd, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109)

Deadline 

August 2, 2026

Competition Category
Propositional works: 13 White Houses (models + drawings) — thirteen speculative architectural propositions that reconsider the White House as a civic and spatial instrument
Expanded field: Juried image exhibition — single images (drawings, renderings, collages, diagrams, photographs, or other visual propositions)
The thirteenth condition — documentation of the ongoing demolition of the East Wing and construction of a White House ballroom
Lines of Inquiry (not limited to)

Adaptive reuse as institutional reprogramming; Democratic deep retrofit of spatial and procedural systems; unbuilding, subtraction, and architectural refusal; proto-constitutional architectures and draft forms of governance; ritual and protocol reconsidered beyond spectacle; architectures for plural, distributed publics; ecological and infrastructural recalibration; pedagogical architectures of civic reorientation; pop reinterpretation and mediated form; iconoclasm without substitution; architecture as capital display, development instrument, and spectacle economy; preservation as an active political practice

Eligibility 

Open to practitioners, researchers, and scholars working across architecture, landscape, art, design, and related spatial fields, regardless of professional licensure. Individuals and collaborative teams are encouraged to apply. No geographic restrictions stated.

Entry Fee 

Free

Prizes/Awards
Inclusion in the juried image exhibition at Taubman College, University of Michigan
Possible selection to develop full propositional works (models + drawings) alongside invited international practices
Digital scenography, research, and curatorial support
Critical dialogue with White House Historical Association archival materials

Core Introduction 

"13 White Houses" is a curated architectural project hosted by Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, treating the White House as a vehicle for investigating how power is staged in space. Rather than returning to the singularity of the White House as an overdetermined symbol of American governance, the project multiplies it into thirteen distinct "White Houses"—understood not as fixed buildings but as civic constructs: spatial apparatuses through which power is staged, negotiated, naturalized, or contested. The exhibition is organized in three interrelated parts: invited and open-call propositional works (models and drawings), a parallel juried image exhibition of single-image submissions, and a real-time documentary record of the ongoing demolition of the East Wing and construction of a White House ballroom. Submissions may engage adaptive reuse, proto-constitutional architectures, ecological recalibration, preservation as political practice, pop reinterpretation, and other provocations, operating at the scale of building, landscape, campus, city, territory, or diagram.