The contest is open to young applicants from every country in the world and has two categories:

• Professional category: designers or architects* born from 1 January 1982 onwards.
• Student category: design or architecture students* born from 1 January 1982 onwards.

Entries may be individual or from a group of two professionals or two students. Mixed groups are not accepted.

Each person or group may participate in one project only.

Judges, their families, their studios or design teams may not compete. The same applies to members of pre-selection committee.

* or other related professional/discipline such as building engineer

Registration for the contest is free of charge and available from 26 September 2016 on the Internet (www.jumpthegap.net) and can be accessed through the registration page.

All participants must submit their application to take part in the contest by ۱۲:۰۰ hours (GMT+1) on 15 March 2017.

Important note: When two people submit a group entry, both group members must complete the registration form displayed on the screen.

By registering for the contest, participants confirm that they accept these rules.

Any incomplete or incorrect information or any registration application that does not fulfill the required conditions will be considered as null and void.

The projects must be submitted to the contest website by ۱۲:۰۰ hours (GMT+2) on 19 April 2017.

An independent moderator has been appointed to act amongst the organizer, the jury and the entrants. For any question, please contact Ms. Cristina Castaño – jumpthegap@bcd.es

There are 3 prizes:

• Two winning projects will be chosen and will receive a prize of €۱۰,۰۰۰ each, one in the professional category and one in the student category.
• One Special We Are Water Foundation Prize will be chosen and will receive €۶,۰۰۰. This mention will be given by the We Are Water Foundation, which has two key goals. The first is to promote awareness and encourage debate among the public and organizations on the need to create a new culture for water, to enable the equitable development and sustainable management of the world’s water resources. The second is to carry out a whole host of actions to counter the negative effects of the lack of adequate water resources. The foundation’s fields of activity include involvement in infrastructure, education, health and research, concentrated in the world’s most deprived areas (http://www.wearewater.org).

An ambitious PR campaign will help to promote the winning and finalist projects and their authors. The authors of the winning and finalist projects will be invited to attend the Awards Ceremony event in Barcelona (Spain) during the second semester of 2017. Roca will cover travel and accommodation expenses for only winning projects authors.

All taxes on the prize are the sole responsibility of the winner, regardless of his/her jurisdiction. The winner may be withheld with the taxes that are applicable according to the Personal Income Tax, Non-resident Income Tax and according to the provisions of international treaties that may be applicable.

Consequently, the winner, by accepting these legal bases, is aware of the tax consequences of any kind that might result from claiming the prize and ROCA takes no responsibility for such cause.

If required, the author/s of the winning project will cooperate with Roca’s Design Department on the manufacture of a possible full-size mock-up or specific material to be used in presenting the project.

In early May 2017, a pre-selection committee made up of representatives of the Roca Design Centre and the We Are Water Foundation will select 24 projects from amongst the entries received, which will be presented to the juries. 20 of these projects (10 from professionals and 10 from students) will be the preselected. The other 4 projects will be the We Are Water Foundation Prize Finalists.

The juries selections will be performed on-line in late May/early June 2017.

The jury for the Professional and Student categories Prizes will receive a “virtual dossier” with the 20 preselected projects to judge (10 from professionals and 10 from students). They will choose first 4 projects from each category, which will be the 8 finalists. Amongst the finalists, they will vote a second round and chose 1 winner from each category.

The jury for the Special We Are Water Foundation Prize will receive a “virtual dossier” with the 4 finalist projects to judge, from which they will chose the winner.

In the event of a tie, the President’s vote shall decide.

The jury is made up of the following professionals:

• President:Patrik Schumacher, Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, Germany
• Josep Congost, Roca Design and Innovation Director, Spain
• Vladimir Pirojkov, CEO of High Complexity Prototyping Centre KINETICA, Russia
• Isabel Roig, Managing Director of BCD Barcelona Design Centre, Spain
• Anjali Srinivasan, Director of ChoChoMa Studios, India
• Benedetta Tagliabue, Director of EMBT & Enric Miralles Foundation, Italy
• Valentin Vodev, Founder of Vodev Studio, Bulgaria
• Ma Yansong, Founding Principal of MAD Architects, China

The jury is made up of the following professionals:

• President:Xavier Torras, Director of We Are Water Foundation, Spain
• Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs Kingdom of The Netherlands
• Sophie Thomas, Founding Director of Thomas.Matthews Agency, United Kingdom

All submissions will be assessed anonymously. When making their assessments, the judges will have regard to the following criteria and requirements:

The authors of the 20 preselected projects of the Professional and Student categories and the authors of the 4 finalist projects of the Special We Are Water Foundation Prize will be asked to send, within 48 hours of notification:

• A JPG, PNG or GIF format copy of their degree, certificate or diploma, or a copy of the school’s matriculation document if they are students. In the event of group participation, documents of both members will be sent.
• A copy of their passport or National Document of Identity.

The finalists of the Professional and Student categories (4 + 4), as well as the 4 finalists of the Special We Are Water Foundation Prize will have a ‘REFINE’ period. They will be asked to complete the material presented with e.g.: original or further high resolution images, better quality renders or further details about their project. This additional material must be presented within ۱۰ days after the notification.

Participants in the contest guarantee to Roca the originality of their respective proposals and that each of them enjoys the unhindered exercise of the intellectual and property rights over their respective proposals.

All intellectual property rights, as well as possible industrial property rights over the projects submitted, belong exclusively to their authors.

Participants are responsible for the protection of their design submissions by copyright or patent application, prior to submitting them to the competition.

All participants (including the winner/s and finalists) assign to Roca and BCD, the rights for copy, reproduction and publication of the projects submitted to the contest, for all countries in the world and for the maximum period permitted by law in each one of such countries for the purpose of promotion in publications of general interest and/or specialized magazines, as well as on the websites, editions and publications of Roca, and/or BCD Barcelona Design Centre, and also on the contest website.

Exceptionally, participants other than the winner/s and finalists who do not wish to publish their work, they must request it in written form to Roca, before 19 July 2017.

The winning participant/s offer Roca an exclusive option to purchase the rights to exploit the industrial property rights over their respective awarded work which shall be exercised within the first anniversary from the date of the Awards Ceremony. If this period expires without Roca’s having exercised its purchase option, the author/s of the winning project may freely dispose of intellectual and industrial property rights relating to it. In the event that Roca exercises the aforementioned option, the author’s name must always be mentioned in connection with the design.

In the event that Roca decides to develop the design project for industrial and commercial purposes, Roca shall offer to the author of the project a preemption right to perform such development; should the author not exercise such preemption right, Roca shall be entitled to develop the project itself or to engage the services of a third party to do so.