The Brick Bay Folly is an annual competition where teams of New Zealanders collaborate to create entertaining and innovative architectural follies. The 2020 iteration of the event, which explores the intersection of sculpture and architecture, is now open to entries from teams of current students or recent graduates (within the last five years).

One of the project concepts will be selected as the winner, and the team will receive $30,000 in grants and sponsorship to construct their project, with support from Resene, Naylor Love and Unitec. The finished project is then displayed on a site at the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail.

Folly organisers note, “Architectural follies are found all over the world, and their purpose is to inspire and delight audiences, but even more importantly folly projects provide a fantastic opportunity for emerging architects to test their ideas on a real life project, manage construction, solve contingencies and participate in physical construction.”

The winning project for 2019, The Wood Pavilion, was unveiled on 7 November and was designed and built by four first-year MArch students at the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture and Planning – Leo Zhu, Dorien Viliamu, Daniel Fennell and Wenhan Ji – with the help of industry mentors.

Regarding to what the team learned from taking part in the Brick Bay Folly last year, Viliamu notes, “A lot of the on the spot thinking, figuring out what we’re going to do where has been quite challenging, and I think what we’ve learnt a lot of is planning skills.”

Entries must be submitted by midnight on 1 April 2020. See the full submission guidelines and how to submit your project at brickbaysculpture.co.nz.

The 2020 Brick Bay Folly is sponsored by the Brick Bay Sculpture Trust, Resene, Naylor Love, Architecture New Zealand and ArchitectureNow.