We had many good suggestions last spring for what should constitute the next Armchair Architecture Contest. In addition we had some other suggestions come up in the mean time, and I've got a few of my own. Here is a quick rundown of items brought up to me.
- find an armed services golf course in need of upgrade and use it as the basis for the contest
- Phil Young had a Tilly-based contest possibility
- Jim Thompson mentioned having some topos for an actual possible site somewhere
- I could find another site and keep it a secret for the duration of the contest and then we could compare the entrants to the original
There are a couple of other things to consider as well. Last time we used what was a new software for most of the contestants (google sketchup) I liked it because it was free and it gave us usable 3-dimensional views of the holes. The downside was it had a high learning curve and required a lot of support and a fast machine. Do we want to use it exclusively again? Also, there was the fact that we had designed 18 holes, which was a lot of work. Both of these things probably conspired to keep participation low, should we change it up a bit?
I am inclined to make things a bit less involved, in order to spur more participation, but I don't wish to do so at the expense of the fun and deep learning that I believe went on with last years' contestants, judges, and myself.
One suggestion is to perhaps keep the contest at 18 holes but only require contestants to do sketchup (i.e. get good 3D, ground-level images) for one hole only, but dress it up as accurately as possible to show us what their stylistic and strategic ideas would look like. While the rest of it would be a routing on the topo map and a decent write-up.
Another one is to let people get into groups if they wish so as to spread the work out a bit. That's fine by me, but my guess is routing is something that is not best done by committee. So if you get into a group I suggest there be one person who has final say in the matter or else hurt feelings may result.
Please give me your thoughts on this, especially if you would like to be a contestant!A last couple of housekeeping notes. I've still got to finish the prizes from last year (custom scorecards for the participants) but I'm about 3/4 done. I apologize for being so late with these, once done I'll get them printed at the local print shop and mailed out.
Also I was going to post a big write-up on sketchup. Unfortunately I was working on a jump drive which I subsequently lost. So I think rather than a big masters thesis on it, it will now need to be just a discussion as I don't have time to duplicate the whole write-up.
P.S. I'll post a graphic with all of the entries from last year here in a little bit.