30 Oct 2014

Open Call for Spectacular Project Ideas

Beam Camp, the summer camp for the fine and manual arts, technology and collaboration, announces its annual international search to find its 2015 Beam Projects. The large-scale collaborative projects are realized by Beam campers, aged 10-17, and staff at the camp's 106-acre facility in Strafford, New Hampshire.

Projects are budgeted at $12,500. Winning designers receive a $3,000 honorarium, travel costs, and are invited to visit camp during the project's production.

Proposals can be submitted on the Beam Camp website until Sunday, January 18, 2015 with Semi-finalists announced on Monday, January 26, 2015. (submission page: www.beamcamp.com/project-proposal/).

Beam offers these prompts for proposals:
• Big ideas that result in a unique, ambitious, and spectacular product
• Projects that are ambitious enough to occupy and challenge 108 campers and 20+
staff members
• Projects that take advantage of our camp's landscape and rural setting
• Proposals that communicate a clear vision (sketches, diagrams, and other visuals are
always helpful) and represent your/your team's expertise

Beam Camp Co-Director Danny Kahn says of the Project, 'it's a chance for kids to walk around inside the mind of a designer of big things and systems. The kids get to learn project-specific making skills and practice the tools of collaboration, and more importantly see how to bring to life a passionately held and expertly developed idea.'

The 2014 Beam Projects reflected Beam's core emphasis on cultivating creative thinking and applied collaborative work. 'Forest Phantasmagoria,' Beam Project 2014.1, is 30' kaleidoscope designed by sculptors Niko Van Stichel and Lut Vandebos. 'Creatura,' Beam Project 2014.2, designed by Mark Torrens and Federico Forestiero, is a person-powered water vehicle with three means of propulsion including a human hamster wheel.

Previous winners include 2014 Architzer Award Winner 'Swingtones' by Supermass Studio and Sage & Coombe Architecture, 'Cut, Paste, Build' by Robots, Caitlin Berrigan's 'Macro/Micro Domes,' Steve Gerberich and Nathaniel Lieb's 'Beam Fleet,' Jan Drojarski and Jon Bocksel's 'Jungletopia,' Christine Baumgartner and Manuel Kretzer's 'Float With The Flowers,' the solar-powered film 'A Trip to the Sun' by Daniela Kostova and Mike DeSeve, WIgnall & Moore's 'The Stories of Machines That Never Flew,' 'The Habitats of Parker Mountain' by pragmatopia and architecture students of the University of Kassel, Germany, 'Creature Quake' huge monsters built into the landscape be Rachel Kunreuther and Doug Stokey and 'Navigating Dreams,' a timber-frame boat-machine by Matthew Springett Associates.