Switzerland, We Have A Problem - A call for ideas

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About Switzerland, We Have A Problem - A call for ideas

When the law is a flaw, what does design offer?

On Sunday November 29th, 2009 the citizens of Switzerland overwhelmingly passed a referendum banning the construction of new minarets in their country. With this move, the ban will be added to the Swiss Federal Constitution – a new and dubious level of status for an architectural element to reach.

Optimistically, let’s put aside questions of religious persecution and think about this as a design problem: what are the tensions within the built environment that made this ban possible? When the law is a flaw, what does design offer?

This is a tale of equality in confrontation with equanimity. One the one hand, the right to religious freedom should include reasonable material expression: every church with its cross, every mosque with its minaret [1]. On the other hand, the atmosphere and image of Switzerland’s picturesque Cantons are so finely crafted and manicured that formal deviation disturbs the calm.

To address this impasse between the rightful expression of the Muslim religion and the value of Switzerland’s overwhelmingly scenic environment we challenge you to design a solution that allows the best of both worlds. Can you design a minaret as event rather than object?

Your task is to design a deployable minaret that can attain full presence, visible from a distance, during each of the five daily calls to prayer.

Format
Entries must be submitted as a single image that depicts both the deployed and hidden states.

Submission
Entries must be added to the Switzerland, We Have A Problem group pool on Flickr (hey. that's this pool!).

Deadline
All entries must be submitted no later than December 18 at 11:59PM Pacific Standard Time.

http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=94363_0_23_0_M