According to Nasar (1999), in design and architecture competitions the promoter chooses among the competing designers and architects the design for the specific project that better feats his interests. What about architects and designers? How do they see architecture and design competitions? Competitions advantages are identified as an excellent way to discover new talents, innovative designs and generate publicity both to the project and competitors, especially the winner that acquires status and recognition. Quoting Cesar Pelli in Nasar, “Competitions have great potential because they open up opportunities to talented architects that may be young and unrecognized to become recognized”. Another relevant advantage is the opportunity to explore new solutions and to raise awareness for new materials and applications as presented by Larry N. Deutsh in Nasar: “I look at what wins design competition to see what kind of new and inventive use of materials are out there…It’s a part of an educational process for me”. Innovations are often presented in competitions, using these initiatives as dissemination channels, that introduce new products and bring awareness into architects and designers who have concerns regarding recent developments in their areas of work. This is especially important in the context under which we analyse the promotion of the photovoltaic technology development in the urban environment.

Within this thesis aim, to study the potential for PV-based urban-scale product development in Portugal, an international architecture/design competition, 1st Lisbon Ideas Challenge was promoted. This competition was organized by IN+/IST, within the framework of IEA-PVPS — Task10: Urban Scale Photovoltaic Applications. Lisbon Ideas Challenge invited young professionals to present innovative ideas on urban structures that integrated in their design concept PV materials, fostering innovative ideas relevant to the diffusion of PV technology in urban areas. This initiative intended to perceive architecture and designer stakeholders’ response to innovative materials and their role and commitment in the development and promotion on new ideas and products that could better respond to the needs they face as users of the materials/technology. Entries should present proposals on urban-scale structures incorporating PV and respond to the following design constraints:

• Integration: of the PV materials in the urban design concept, physically and aesthetically.

• New PV technological concepts or new application of conventional PV technological concepts: use of PV materials in innovative ways.

• Mass Production: entries should target mass-production concepts, where PV materials are used as part of a wider strategy on integrating renewable energy in the urban environment.

• Communication: Entries should include an effective means of communicating to the wide public that the urban-scale structure has an embedded PV system.

Additionally, and underlining the entrepreneurial concept allied to the competition, ideas ought to present a market/business potential within the geographical context they were aimed at, demonstrated through a simplified business plan. This simplified business plan was aimed at fostering competitors’ understanding of market needs and within this sense approach the market potential identifying the need to the project, the clients to who was aimed at, as well as identify the technological partners and the possible market barriers and constraints faced.

The competition’s dissemination strategy was to address new actors, raising awareness on the technology and providing some background knowledge that would foster the development of new work areas and complementary competencies. To achieve this goal, the competition had a dedicated website and was advertised in architecture and PV related websites, magazines and conferences. Another dissemination action consisted of an approach to Portuguese schools of architecture and design, with dedicated presentations or dissemination material.

2. COMPETITION RESULTS

At the end of the project submission period 130 projects had been registered at the competition’s website. The leaders were Portugal and the United States that registered 24 and 25 projects respectively, followed by Italy and France, respectively with 11 and 8 projects. The large majority belonged to graduated architects that registered as individuals, although designers also responded very positively to the competition. The range of ages from the competitors is wide from 19 to 68 years old and 29% were undergraduate participants, 48% of competitors graduated less than five years and 53% of professional for more then five years. Individuals registered 81 projects, while teams, mostly of two or three members, registered 49 projects. Regarding previous experience with PV technology and previous participations in competitions, 81% of the registered participants did not had any experience with PV while the participation in previous competitions was more balanced, with 55% experienced participants.

From the 130 registered projects, 23 were actually submitted, which means a 17.7% success. Portugal was the leading country presenting six projects, followed by the USA and Netherlands, each with two projects. The submitted projects belonged in their majority to teams of recently graduated architects. Regarding previous experience with PV technology or in competitions, nine of the competitors had already had experience with the technology, while twelve had entered previous competitions. The submitted projects were evaluated by a panel of PV experts from IEA — PVPS-Task 10 that chose ten finalists projects, where ideas vary from a sustainable village concept to specific applications for PV in street furniture and even an original road safety application. The final judging panel, consisting of architects, designers and PV experts decided the winner and attributed three honourable mentions.