In the past two days, it has been swiped by a public announcement of a college student competition.
What is strange is not a large-scale student competition, but the organizer is from a zf unit in SZ, and the topic is the urban design of Dapeng New District, Shenzhen.
Usually such open competitions led by ZF are open to the public for bidding, and large-scale architectural design or urban design projects will have a qualification review step to limit the entry threshold.
However, this competition is beautifully named, "It will provide a practice stage and teaching base for urban design topics in key areas of Shenzhen for domestic universities".
The words are written between the lines, and the name is right, but after reading carefully for a long time, I can see the two words from the cracks of the words - "white prostitution"
Co-authored architects have been left in vain, and consumption has been downgraded to students, right?
The bidding field is like a sand field, and the competition bidding that rolls up is flying
It is said that bidding is a battlefield without gunpowder in the construction circle.
Last year, 335 design units bid for a school project in Chongqing, and in the end, some people estimated that the total cost of bidding was far greater than the total amount of prize money, which became a joke in other industries; in an urban design competition, 4,000 pages vs 1,600 pages of text, and the last 4,000 pages of text won, which shows the degree of involution.
International Competition for the Design of the Future Campus of Western (Chongqing) Science City
I'm afraid that the competition bidding may only be a stack of workload at the end, and whoever can come up with a more in-depth design plan at the preliminary plan stage will have a better chance of coming out on top.
Image source network
In the past, small firms may have relied on some bidding competitions that do not limit qualifications to become famous, but now the real estate industry is sluggish, and some large design institutes have failed to accept projects, and in order to survive, they have to vigorously expand the public construction market and participate in the fight.
Even in Shenzhen's recent primary school bidding competition, no less than 40 large and small design units will be screened out for just one topic, which can be said to be a success.
Shenzhen Nanshan Five Schools Architectural Design Competition
The cost of participating in a bidding project is enormous. Let's make a rough calculation, assuming that the bidding time cycle of the general formal architectural plan is about one to two months, the investment of designer manpower is about 5~10 people, plus other business and management costs, and then counting the renderings and animation, printing costs and travel expenses, etc., it is expected to reach 15~600,000 yuan, and this price will increase or decrease according to the different cities.
In addition to the preparation of the project in the early stage, it is also responsible for the operation and maintenance of the competition, qualification review, expert discussion, the more bidding documents, the more time it takes to review and compare, and the consumption of manpower and material resources is also great.
What's more, there are many bidding routines, illegal bidding, low-price bidding, tendencing to accompany bidding, white prostitution schemes and other tricks emerge in an endless stream, which directly shocks people.
Even if the bid is successfully won after such a brutal zero-sum game, there may not be a chance that it will be implemented within a few years. The cost of a bidding competition is so high, architects are discouraged, and the party does not want to spend such a high expense, but the new urban construction still needs to be promoted, so how to carry out the game?
Isn't there still a group of college students waiting to be fed?
Student competitions, low cost, and many routines
In the impression of many people, the works of the student competition are full of unrealistic fantasies, all of which are floating concepts in the sky, and lack the possibility of implementation.
Image source network
However, in fact, there are future-oriented topics in the competition, and of course there are relatively practical topics.
The disconnection between the curriculum design of the School of Architecture and the design of the real industry is no longer a hot topic, and the teachers of major colleges and universities have also consciously changed, and the curriculum of the senior year has also frequently gone to the real site to investigate, and the project to be implemented is used as the topic.
Therefore, it is not a new practice to divide the social group and the student group in the competition. Compared with the social group, the design of the student group will be bolder, and the quality of the drawings will not be inferior, and even have a certain possibility of implementation.
2023 The 3rd Songyang Rural Revitalization National Architectural Design Competition
(The left is the design company's work, and the right is the student's work)
Compared with the hundreds of thousands of bonuses in the bidding project to drive the business designers who have seen the world, the prize of one or two hundred thousand yuan in the student competition can make the students who have not been in the world rush to it, and the communication through the students' channels can increase the exposure, and the economic benefits obtained from this are immeasurable.
If you add an entry fee to this, hundreds of student teams may pay for themselves in a single contest and even earn money.
Endless online voting
But for students in school, completing the school's curriculum and having the opportunity to participate in competitions and win prizes actually sounds pretty good.
So let's take a look at the prizes set up in this competition.
Derived from https://www.dpxq.gov.cn/xxgk/xxgk/tzgg/content/post_11224503.html
Isn't this a bright white prostitute?
Consumption downgrades are no longer unusual
The timing of the start and end of the project is also very clever, just stuck in the eight-week course cycle, and after the end of the semester, there is also a thoughtful time to improve the design.
Image source network
As advocated in the competition, many colleges and universities have begun to take the initiative to choose this project as the next design topic and invite students in higher grades to participate.
"Anyway, we have to do the course design, why don't you come and participate in our actual project, you have completed the course, we got the plan, everyone wins"
This does increase the channels for students to participate in actual projects and better participate in the wave of urban construction, which is also a valuable practical opportunity, but it is undeniable that this is also a new attempt after the consumption downgrade. It is to be expected that there will only be more and more such landing competitions specifically for students.
Because of the white prostitution students, it is not a new thing in the design industry.
In school, if a teacher receives the actual project design, as long as the price is lower, you can find a few students to complete a project; and the students who are engaged in the change are likely to take over the drawing projects that have been outsourced by the design institute layer by layer; students who are new to the workplace should also have the opportunity to encounter the "observation period" and "probation period" that you start to work for free before you join the company.
What's more, there is no lower limit to give you titles such as "master studio", "paid training", "learning opportunities" and so on for you to pay to work.
However, most graduate students in domestic colleges and universities need to intern in the design institute or complete the teacher's horizontal project to meet the training requirements of "the combination of production, education and research", and its essence is more to let students act as cheap labor, rather than to achieve the output for the purpose of research.
As a result, a clear workplace hierarchy has been formed, and it is often said that newcomers are easy to be bullied and squeezed by old employees, but in the design industry, it seems that there is a new term under this "newcomer" - "college student".
When I was in my third year of college, my cousin's rural family wanted to build a house, and when he learned that I was studying architectural design, he came to the door.
"Good nephew, you can give the staff officer the house in my cousin's house, and design it into a good-looking three- or four-story small western-style building, and it is also for you to have some experience, how can you usually have any opportunity to get in touch with real projects......"
This tone is very familiar.