About Competition
Minab: Architecture Beyond Consolation — For Peace and Life is an international design competition for the landscape and memorial space of the Minab School Martyrs’ Cemetery in Hormozgan, Iran.
The competition follows the tragic loss of schoolchildren in Minab on 28 February 2026. It invites architects, landscape architects, urban designers, students, multidisciplinary teams, and design practices to propose a meaningful and sensitive place for remembrance, consolation, empathy, peace, and life.
The proposed memorial is envisioned not as an isolated monument, but as a living public landscape: a place where memory can remain present while everyday life continues around it.
The Theme
The competition explores how architecture and landscape can respond to loss, preserve collective memory, and create spaces for consolation, empathy, peace, and life.
Rather than defining a predetermined architectural language, Minab invites participants to develop thoughtful design responses rooted in the cultural, climatic, and spatial context of southern Iran.
Project Site
The competition focuses on an approximately 8,000 m² intervention area within Minab’s main cemetery in Hormozgan, southern Iran.
The site includes the 2,000 m² martyrs’ burial ground, approximately 2,000 m² of adjoining vacant land, and selected internal pathways.
The project aims to transform this place of remembrance into a meaningful public landscape for reflection, consolation, and collective memory.
Design Principles
The competition is guided by four foundational concepts:
• Remembrance
• Consolation
• Empathy
• Peace and Life
Participants are encouraged to explore how architecture and landscape can express these concepts through spatial experience, materiality, atmosphere, and relationships with the surrounding context.
Memorial Landscape Program
Mandatory Elements
- A principal memorial space or spatial sequence
- Sensitive organization and enhancement of the martyrs’ burial ground
- Accessible movement and circulation routes
- Places for pause, reflection, mourning, and remembrance
- Landscape elements and climate-responsive shaded areas
- A meaningful relationship with the wider cemetery and surrounding public space
Optional Design Opportunities
- A gathering or communal space
- A space for narrative, interpretation, or public memory
- Educational or cultural components
- Places for sitting, conversation, and collective reflection
- Water, planting, shade, and other climate-responsive interventions
- Additional interventions in the surrounding area where appropriately justified
Eligibility
- Individuals holding a bachelor’s degree or higher in architecture, urban design, or a related field; professional architecture and urban design firms; and qualified consulting engineering companies.
- Other interested individuals, students, and professionals from other disciplines may participate in interdisciplinary teams, provided that each team designates an official representative with a bachelor’s degree or higher in architecture, urban design, or a related field.
Submission / Key Dates
Key Dates:
- Call for Entries: 23 August 2026
- Registration Deadline: 27 October 2026
- Questions & Clarifications Deadline: 29 October 2026
- Submission Opens: 12 November 2026
- Submission Deadline: 17 November 2026
- Announcement of Winners: 5 December 2026
- Prize Distribution: By 11 December 2026
All deadlines are at 23:59 Iran time (UTC+3:30).
For the complete brief, rules, submission requirements, and registration, visit:
https://minabmemorial.ir
Jury
The Minab Memorial Competition will be evaluated by an international jury of architects, landscape designers, and experts in art, culture, and the built environment.
The jury brings together diverse perspectives on memorial architecture, landscape, cultural identity, and the relationship between memory and public space.
For the complete list of jury members and their professional backgrounds, please visit the official competition website.
Prize
1st Prize: 12,000,000,000 IRR
2nd Prize: 6,000,000,000 IRR
3rd Prize: 3,000,000,000 IRR
4th Prize: 2,000,000,000 IRR
5th Prize: 1,500,000,000 IRR
Up to 8 Special Certificates may also be awarded.
About the Organizer
The Minab Memorial Competition is organized by Astan Quds Razavi, in collaboration with the Hormozgan Provincial Governorate and Minab Municipality.
The competition is conceived as a non-profit architectural and landscape design initiative with a public and humanitarian purpose: to create a meaningful place of remembrance, consolation, and collective reflection following the loss of the Minab schoolchildren.
Why Minab?
Minab is not only a site of remembrance. It is an invitation to reflect on how architecture can respond to grief, sustain collective memory, and create a place where remembrance and life can coexist.
To find more details & Register visit HERE
LAST DATE OF REGISTRATION: 29 OCTOBER 2026
LAST DATE OF SUBMISSION: 17 NOVEMBER 2026
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