Architecture in Transformation should respond to contemporary challenges and changes. What concerns us primarily is the relationship between architecture and city, as well as the one between architecture and natural environment. The competition aims at searching and constructing human space with a Spirit of Place in the increasingly fragmented cities and unordered villages, exploring environment-friendly and sustainable ideas in the information age, and integrating creative concepts with solid basic skills in architectural design. The competition requires the participants to make detailed insights and reflections on architectural development, explore complicated demands of the people nowadays for architecture and environment, pay attention to specific sites and the events happening in them, and configure viable and dynamic urban and architectural spaces, at the same time seek suitable techniques to guarantee the possibility of implementation of the project.
“UIA-HYP Cup International Student Competition in Architectural Design” was initiated in 2012. It is internationally sponsored by the Union International des Architects (UIA), organized by the School of Architecture, Tianjin University and Urban Environment Design (UED) Magazine. Shanghai HYP-ARCH Architectural Design Consultant Co. Ltd. is the Exclusive Naming Sponsor. It is an annual architectural competition which has been successfully held for 9 years. Each year, the UIA-HYP Cup is chaired by an internationally renowned architectural master, and the jury panel is selected from among the world's most outstanding architects and deans from schools of architecture. To boost the architectural education which mainly focuses on basic skill training in its conventional and progressive system, UIA-HYP Cup International Student Competition takes the role as an external platform for student to embrace a brand new thinking approach in order to improve their comprehensive problem solving skill, meanwhile it is also some kind of headhunter for discovering emerging elite architects.