The Backyard Retreat Design Competition results are in! In June, we asked the students enrolled in our Summer Webinar Series to think about submitting a design for a Backyard Retreat  for a chance to win scholarship funds. The world is experiencing a string of unprecedented events right now that require many of us to find new ways to cope with stress and unwind. Whether it be camping, biking, running, sketching, video games, knitting, or gardening, we all have something that allows us to re-center. This design competition was looking for the architectural embodiment of a space that allows you to retreat into your stress relieving element.

Well, we received five amazing entries and you can see them all in the gallery below. What you don’t see is the extremely detailed plans that all the entrants sent us. From sketches to wall and structure dimensions, to different iterations and renderings both inside and out, and from different viewpoints including aerial views, we were blown away by the ideas, creativity and skill we saw in each of them. All 200 members of our firm voted on what they thought were the top submissions:

First Place Winner is Edward Minar Widjaja, whose design for Cabin of Serenity won over the majority of votes and he walks away with a $1.5k scholarship to continue his design education studies. Congratulations Edward!

Coming up next: Lionakis’ very own staff sketch competition!