Steel Structure Student Competition held annually since 2004 by Turkish Construction Steel Association (TUCSA) has been organized virtually for the first time this year as the universities utilize online distant learning due to COVID-19 global pandemic. In these uncertain times with no certainty on its duration and individuals transforming their work and even social lives to the digital environment, organizing the competition in the virtual space would be a risky but special experience.
The Jury considered two aspects when selecting the theme of the competition: the first is defining the structure exhaustively but leaving the details to the students, with the second being giving out a general concept and leave the environmental conditions to the creativity of the students. The theme of this year’s competition, as in the second option, has been selected as a subject where aesthetics and engineering could be used to the utmost whilst allowing the generation of creative solutions: “Steel Protection Covering”. In its evaluation, the jury assessed that creativity became prominent in the projects and therefore each project contained many different creative elements.
Further to Covid-19 precautions, the projects have first been shared with the jury members without disclosing their designers, then the jury evaluation meeting was held virtually on 3 November 2020. The awarding jury comprised of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ece Ceylan Baba (President of the Jury), Ahmet Alataş, Onur Güleç, Salih Küçüktuna and Dr. Selçuk Iz concluded that the submitted projects were in accordance with the participation conditions provided in the specification and the following three projects (listed alphabetically) among the participants were to be granted equivalent awards and an additional project was to be granted honorable mention:
Projects Granted with Equivalent Awards
Project: Ebabil
Ahmet Koz, YTÜ Department of Architecture
Muhammet Bahadırcan Günay, YTÜ Department of
Architecture
Emirhan Delice, İTÜ Department of Civil Engineering
Project: Re-Fo(a)rm
Abdullah Kahraman, YTÜ Department of Architecture
Fatih Mat, İTÜ Department of Civil Engineering
Enver Yiğit Doğan, YTÜ Department of Architecture
Ali Enver Serttaş, YTÜ Department of Architecture
Project: Scotia
Tahir Can Yarımoğlu, İTÜ Department of Architecture
Muhammet Furkan Tarım, İTÜ Department of Civil Engineering
Oktay Yüceel, İTÜ Department of Civil Engineering
Umut Müezzinoğlu, İTÜ Department of Architecture
Project Awarded with Honorable Mention
Project: Sarayburnu
Enes Kaya, MEF University Department of Architecture
Zülfiye Yıldız, MEF University Department of Architecture
Zehra Elçin Gürsoy, MEF University Department of Civil Engineering
Having stated that the teams participated in the competition despite the existing conditions were appreciated and the projects were unique and of high quality, the president of the jury and TUCSA Competitions and Awards Committee Executive Board Coordinator Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ece Ceylan Baba expressed that the preparations for the 18th Steel Structure Design Student Competition (SteelPRO 2021) have been initiated. It has also been stated that in order to render the competition more effective and instrumental next year, SteelPRO 2021 programme is considered to be integrated with a competition introduction meeting, a series of educational seminars on steel architecture and engineering, and workshops.