A competition where what matters is not just what you design but how you get there.

Have you ever looked at a finished architectural project and thought, “I wish I could see how they got here?” What questions were asked at the beginning? Which ideas were scrapped? Where did the breakthroughs happen?

In most competitions, the final rendering captivates the audience with its glossy, polished, and perfected appearance. But we all know: the real story lives in the process. It lives in the late-night sketches, the frustrating dead-ends, the messy ideation boards, the doubts, the pivots, and the aha moments. It lives in you—in the choices you make when no one’s watching.

Forming the Form is not just another design competition.
It’s a challenge that invites you to pull back the curtain and share the creative journey that shapes your design. Your final project is important—but not because it looks good in isolation. It’s important because it tells us something about the path you took to get there.

This is a call for architects, urban designers, artists, thinkers, coders, and storytellers to step into a new format—one where your methodology is your masterpiece.

You’ll be asked to take on a design brief (you can choose from suggested themes or propose your own), and document your process:

• your sketches,
• your thinking,
• your discarded ideas,
• your inspirations,
• your dead-ends and discoveries.

And then—you’ll turn that process into a short video story (4–7 minutes), showing us how your mind moved, how your team worked, how the form… formed.

Alongside the video, you’ll submit your final design, not as the goal, but as the result of that complex, beautiful journey.

This year’s challenge begins close to home. We ask you to look around your immediate environment—your own neighborhood, block, or residential cluster. Identify one real, tangible issue or missed opportunity in your surroundings, and design an intervention that addresses it through the principles of sustainable development. Whether it’s a neglected alley, an underused courtyard, or a poorly designed gathering space—let the problem be your inspiration, and let your process show the path to possibility.

You are free to use any tools, platforms, or creative technologies that enhance your process—including AI-powered tools, parametric design software, collaborative platforms, or even analog techniques. We encourage you to explore how new media and artificial intelligence can enrich—not replace—your creativity. What matters is not what tool you use, but how you use it to think differently, iterate boldly, and tell a story that’s uniquely yours. The jury won’t just be architects. You’ll be seen by thinkers, educators, researchers, and innovators who care about how we design as much as what we design.

And the best part?
The most compelling submissions won’t just win—they’ll be published in a research anthology on design processes, exhibited in an international digital showcase, and may even be invited into Nida’s future educational programs.

Because in the end, your process is your legacy.

Are you ready to show the world how you form the form?