Recently there is a growing tendency to reevaluate wooden buildings in the view of global environmental problem, reuse and recycle of resources. On the other hand, because of frequent city fires in the Japanese history, wooden buildings are became strictly restricted by building regulations in Japan after the World War. With the recent revision of the Japan's Building Standard Law, performance prescription is adopted based on which buildings with wooden construction can also be accepted as fire-resistive buildings provided that the required performance is satisfied. But in the present condition, research on the fire resistance of wood-based construction is being put forward by trial and error. There are still many hurdles to be cleared till the construction of wood-based buildings.
Design proposals are free from the framework of present laws. High-rise buildings with hybrid construction, which is made of wooden and wood-based materials, are taken up as design objects. Proposals that can break the bottleneck of design based on the orthodox consideration of fire-resistance, those which may be always around us but still not used in practice, those which may not agree with present laws, and time and research are necessary till the phase of practical use, but seems to have prospect for the future, and those which even have no direct relation with fire prevention are all expected.

Idea competition-Fire safe wooden high-rise building system

Either of the followings is admitted. Plural submissions by the same individual or delegate are not accepted.
1. Individual member (including associate member) of AIJ or organizations those have convention of cooperation agreements with AIJ*
2. Group of members of AIJ or organizations those have convention of cooperation agreement with AIJ*
* Architectural Institute of Korea,
   Architectural Society of China,
   American Society of Civil Engineers,
   Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and
   an architectural institute of Chinese Taipei, Taiwan are applicable.

Assume a high-rise building with about 10 stories, whose building system is safe to fire based on following conditions. It is not necessarily required to prove the fire resistive performance of construction by calculation or experiments if it can be judged that the construction is fire-resistant in the range of supposed conditions.
(1) Location: Urban district
(2) Use: No special specification
(3) Use of wood: The main part of construction should be made of wood or materials whose main ingredient is wood. It is fundamental that wood or wooden materials should be used in the components that support the load. It is also accepted to use non-woody materials to bear the load, but the function of wooden construction components should be made clear.

The design is not required to comply with present laws of Japan as long as the building does not collapse till the end of the fire without fire-fighting activity of fire brigade. The damage of some individual components is accepted as long as the building itself has no problem.
It is premised that the building planning is possible to make sure that the occupants can evacuate safely without spoiling the feature of the proposed construction system. If the view of refuge plan differs with generally accepted prescriptive or performance-based method, it should be illustrated.
The case, in which the fire-fighting activity cannot be expected, such as an earthquake fire, should be considered when supposing the fire condition. Restriction of the building use to localize a fire is also acceptable as far as the design is meaningful and attractive to the construction of high-rise buildings by wood. Automatic fire-extinguishing equipment can be used to control the spreading of fire as far as the collapse of the building can be certainly prevented without fire-fighting activity by fire brigade.
The location can be assumed either as abstract urban district or concrete site. But in case of specialized site conditions, the significance of the site setup should be explained
It is not necessarily required to prove the fire resistance of the construction by calculation and experiments as far as it can be judged that the construction is fire-resistant in the range of supposed conditions

Japanese or English can be either used. The following conditions apply only to applications in the English language.

Write following contents clearly in one sheet of A4 size paper with free form.

1. The title of the proposal (brief title that can express the proposal exactly)
2. Name in Roman letter, member number and affiliation of representative and coapplicants
3. Name in Roman letter, member number, affiliation, telephone number, FAX number and e-mail address of corresponding person in charge

Following contents should be included in one sheet of A1 size paper(length 841mm width 594mm that should be strictly observed). No specification for the quality of the paper, however panel board is not accepted.

1. The title of the proposal
   The title should be brief and exactly express the contents of the proposal.
2. Design drawing
   The basic information of the usage, scale and construction style of the building should be expressed in the drawing. The view of fire resistance of representative load supporting components should be interpreted in section. The detail use of rooms is not necessary to explain in the drawing if it can be judged that the building is suitable for the proposed use.
3. Explanation of the basic view of fire safety design
   The assumed fire conditions, the method of how to control the fire spread and the view of the fire safety performance of the building system to protect load bearing components against fire exposure should be illustrated.
4. Notice
   In the proposal drawing, the name, institution and other information about the submitters should not appear.

Submission must arrive before 17:00, 30th (Monday) of June 2003.

Highest award work One piece, Testimonial and Extra prize of 500,000 Yen
Excellent work Not more than three pieces, Testimonial and Extra prize of 100,000 Yen
Fine work Several pieces, Testimonial and Extra prize of 50,000 Yen
However, it is possible that no work is suitable for the Highest award according to application conditions.

Highest award work, excellent works and fine works will be recognized at the Annual Meeting of AIJ, Sept 2003 to be held in Aichi Prefecture. The drawings of awarded works will be exhibited at the AIJ Annual Meeting and in AIJ Architectural Museum with Referees' comments. They will be also printed in AIJ Journal of Architecture and Building Science, and open to public in the homepage of AIJ.

• Drawings and related papers will not be returned.
• The submitters retain copyright of awarded works, but should accept that AIJ can use them for free in the publications of AIJ.
• Questions are welcome by e-mail till 20th of March 2003 and will be answered in the homepage of AIJ (http://www.aij.or.jp/aijhome.htm) after 7th of April 2003 without revealing the name of questioners.

Secretariate of AIJ in charge of 2003 Engineering Design Competition
26-20, Shiba 5-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8414, JAPAN
Tel: +81-3-3456-2051 Fax: +81-3-3456-2058, E-mail: ono@aij.or.jp