arkitekturo competitions FAQ

Yes, absolutely. We encourage diversity in all shapes and forms. As long as all members of the team meet the participation criteria you can build your team with students from different schools and who are currently at different stages of their academic journey.

Yes, as long as you don’t exceed the maximum number of students per team and your new teammates all meet the eligibility criteria, you can add new members to your team at any time before the registration deadline. To do so please send us your team’s details (registration ID) and the details of your new teammate (full name, e-mail, school, Instagram) through our contact form and we will modify your registration.

If you are convinced you want to participate in the competition but still need to talk to your friends about forming a team, you can still register taking advantage of early bird registration fees and incorporate your teammates later 😉

Yes, teammates can be removed from a team at any point before the registration deadline.

The easiest way to remove a student from a team is for that person to contact us expressing their desire to leave the team. If that is not possible please get in touch with us so that we can start a different procedure.

Our registration fees are per team, meaning the registration fee for a team made up by a single student (solo team) is the same as the registration fee for a team made up multiple students (assuming these two teams are from the same country).

We encourage participation in teams, which is the situation you’ll find yourself more often in the professional world (architects rarely work alone), and will also bring down the per-person entry fee.

Unfortunately entry fees are non-refundable, otherwise our whole pricing system would not make sense, as we encourage early registrations through heavy discounts. Plus, after registering you’ll get access to talks and lectures that are exclusive for participants.

However, entries are transferable, so if you’ve registered to the competition but are not able to participate you may transfer it to another student who is interested in participating and hasn’t registered yet.

Yes, you can combine coupon codes as long as they were granted for different reasons. For example, you are welcome to combine a coupon code that was granted for pinning up posters at your school together with another coupon code granted for sharing the competition through your Instagram account.

You are not allowed to combine coupon codes that were granted for the same action. For example, you cannot combine two coupon codes if both were granted for promoting the competition on Instagram.

Yes, you can add new areas to your project that were not requested on the brief, you can remove others that were, or you can change the suggested dimensions of any of them, but don’t do it lightly.

The brief was carefully crafted by arkitekturo and the suggested areas and sizes are a good example of what a complete and proportionate project for this brief could look like. You are free to challenge the suggested areas, as long as you have a solid reason to do so. If you want your project to revolve around a certain area and you need to make that space larger for emphasis, by all means do it. If you read a study, found a piece of news or otherwise have specific information about how that particular city/neighborhood/site might evolve in the future and want to include new areas to your project that will help it adapt to those future developments, go for it. But always make sure your presentation clearly shows (either in drawings or writing) why you chose to do that so that the jury can understand (and possibly reward) your reasons and overall design process.

You are free to include as much or as little information as you consider necessary on your presentation board. Our only advice is to make sure every piece of information you include ads value to the presentation. More isn’t always better. One section might be crucial to understand a project, while others might need two or none.

You are also free to use whichever presentation technique you want. Hand drawings, watercolor, collages, photos of scaled models, renders… you are free to express yourself as you feel more comfortable and think you’ll be able to better show your ideas.

English is the official language of all arkitekturo’s competitions. We ask that any text on your presentation boards is in English, as that is the only language we can guarantee the jury will understand.

We will not disqualify any submission that includes texts in other languages, but we cannot guaranty that the jury will read it or understand it.

Your presentation board should be identified with your registration ID ONLY. Anonymity is a big deal in architecture competitions (specially in professional ones), so labeling your panel with your name is rarely allowed and can lead to your disqualification.

Single files (anything other than your presentation panel) do not need to be labeled in any way. Because arkitekturo competition’s submissions happen online, our system already knows who each uploaded file belongs to.

Yes, you are free to use any other working material on top of the one provided by arkitekturo. However, it is your responsibility to make sure that by using these materials you are not breaking any copyright lay or other types of intellectual property right.

All the material made available by arkitekturo is safe to use within the context of the competition they were provided for.

Some of our competition lectures are prerecorded, while others happen live. In both cases though a recording of the event will remain available for all participants during the entire duration of the competition. So even if you register on the last day, you’ll still get access to all the lectures.

Hosting international event were participants from over 80 different countries come together has its challenges, and language is one of them. Even though we understand not everyone might be able to fluently express in English (it’s a challenge for us too), it does seem to be the most global language as of today. Therefore, all lectures will happen in English.

English is also the official language of all arkitekturo’s competitions and therefore the language that should be used in presentations, forum discussions and all communications with us.

Your panel should be submitted in either .JPG or .PNG format. The maximum size (in pixels) and weight (in MB) of the panel are indicated in the submission form.

Even though PDF is a common format when dealing with architectural drawings, this format is not accepted as PDF cannot be inserted into a website and therefore would make it impossible for us to show your project to the world on our website as well as for other digital media to publish it.

There are two different ways to verify that your files were successfully uploaded.

1. The first one is to simply refresh the submission form page. If your files and text were successfully uploaded you will see a preview of them on this page (instead of the empty page with an upload button you saw the first time you opened the form).
2. You can also look for your registration ID in the competition submissions page. If your files were successfully received you should not only be able to find your registration ID on the list, but you’ll also be able to see some more detailed information about your submission, such as how many files we received (maybe you tried to upload 5 and for some reason we only received 3).

Please do not reach us via email to verify your upload. Most teams submit their work very last minute and we are unable to verify every single submission by e-mail. If you are able to find your registration ID in the competitions submission page and the number of files indicated matches the number of files you intended to upload you can rest assure your submission was received.

A full submission (panel + separate file) can be quite heavy, which depending on the speed of each internet connection can sometimes cause the upload process to time out and fail.

If you are having problems submitting your work, please try to upload your files one by one instead of all at once. For example, if you have 10 individual files to upload, select one and click on the save button, then wait for the page to refresh, pick a second one and click the save button and so on.

In most cases this will solve any upload problems due to slow internet connections.

Remember that if your file size and/or weight exceed the maximum allowed (which are indicated in the submission form) uploading the files one by one will not solve the problem and you’ll need to first resize them to meet the required specs.

When the competition’s calendar marks a particular day (let’s say June 20^th) as the last day of a registration period or the submission deadline, that means you have until 11:59PM on that day to register or submit your work.

We are thrilled to have students from literally all over the world participate in arkitekturo competitions. However, it is impossible for us to give deadlines in local times for every single one of you, that’s why we’ve decided to set our clocks on the GMT-7 time zone.

This time zone guarantees that most of you get a few hours after midnight (your midnight) for each deadline.