Towers, Bridge Homes and Printed Chairs: Five Contests Closing Soon

Designers have weeks left to pitch towers for Vancouver, homes under bridges and chairs printed at home.

The deadlines appear in a roundup of five open competitions published on 7 October 2026. The article, titled 'Five competitions closing in October' and credited to Dezeen staff, gathers calls organised by Buildner, Creathlon Competitions and TerraViva. Dezeen

Buildner's Vancouver Tall Challenge is the high-rise brief. It asks architects, designers and planners to propose innovative tall building concepts for Downtown Vancouver, in Canada. Registration closes on 29 October 2026, with final submissions due by 30 November 2026. That two-step timetable is common in open calls. Entrants register first, then get about a month to finish drawings and documents.

A second Buildner contest looks down rather than up. The Underbridge Edition asks architects and designers for creative housing concepts underneath urban bridges. The site is the leftover space most cities walk past. Registration closes on 4 November 2026, with final submissions due on 8 December 2026.

Furniture makers get the most hands-on brief. Creathlon Competitions' Open Chair contest asks architects, designers, makers and engineers to design a full-sized chair that can be made on a standard home FDM 3D printer. FDM stands for fused deposition modelling, the desktop process that melts plastic filament and builds an object layer by layer. Registration closes on 22 October 2026, the earliest cutoff in the list. Final submissions are accepted until 6 November 2026.

The roundup also includes a TerraViva contest for temporary, small-scale interventions to revitalise public spaces. Those are short-life works meant to change how a square, street or courtyard is used, without permanent construction. Full details for all five entries are carried in the roundup.

Dezeen maintains a dedicated page for architecture and design competitions, where organisers can submit their own calls for promotion. Dezeen Competitions

What makes this stand out is the range of the asks. A tower, a bridge home, a printed chair and a pop-up for a public space do not share a client or a budget. They share tight limits on size, time and means. For fans, this means a quick look at raw ideas before clients, planning rules and costs reshape them.