Public Architecture's Day Labor Station: Just the type of 'great idea' we're looking for in the $5,000 Vision U40 competition

At our Under 40 Leadership Summit in San Francisco - coming up Oct 9-11 - we're premiering the "Vision U40 Competition," in which participating "under 40s" will compete for $5,000 in prizes for the best design-engineering-construction solutions to complex social, economic, and environmental problems, in these broad categories:

Access + Mobility
Human Health + Performance
Aesthetics + Beauty
Human Spirit + Quality of Life
Climate Change
Social Justice
Environment
Technological Innovation

Just to clarify, it's $5,000 shared by 5 winning groups: $500 to each of 4 runners-up, and $3000 to the winning group. Still, not a bad deal.

Here's an example of the kind of thing we're looking for: Public Architecture's Day Labor Station.

The civic design group Public Architecture looked at the conditions under which California's day laborers had to suffer every morning as they waited, hour after hour, to be chosen for work - intense heat, no shade, no toilet facilities, no place to keep a sandwich or a drink cold.

They designed the Public Architecture Day Labor Station, a compact modular facility with shading, refrigerator, toilet - see rendering.

That's the kind of progressive solution we're looking for in the Vision U40 Competition. We encourage Under40 Leadership Summit participants to address one or more of the broad social issues described above and offer a practical design/construction-related solution. U40 Summiteers will vote for the Top 5 Finalists, and the highest vote-getter will win the competition.

NOTE TO AEC FIRMS: You are invited to "self-nominate" up-and-coming young professionals (under age 40) to participate in the U40 Leadership Summit, even if they were not "officially" designated as 40Under40 honorees by Building Design+Construction.

See you in San Francisco on October 9!

Boyd R. Zoccola is Chair and Chief Elected Officer of BOMA International. A BOMA member since 1994, he has served on the Executive, Finance, Investment, and Medical/Healthcare Facilities Committees. An Indiana Real Estate Principal Broker and a board member of the Real Estate Round Table, he is Executive Vice President of Hokanson Companies, Inc., of Indianapolis, and has been involved in the development of $600 million worth of real estate. On a volunteer basis, Zoccola was president of Horizon House and a board member of Girls, Inc. He holds a BA in biology from Indiana University.