AFSF High School Design Competition 2025
The Architectural Foundation of San Francisco
56th Annual AFSF High School Design Competition!
All High School students in both public & private schools in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and globally are encouraged to participate.
For the 2025 challenge, participants are invited to design a vibrant, socially-active public realm along San Francisco's Market Street in support of the city's economic recovery effort downtown.
Downtown San Francisco has struggled to recover from the Covid pandemic, with a slower recovery than every other city in a survey that compared pre- and post-pandemic activity in 62 American cities.
In 2023, then San Francisco Mayor London Breed released the Roadmap to San Francisco’s Future – to refocus the city’s recovery efforts with a goal of attracting 30,000 new residents and students to live downtown by 2030. To help downtown become “everyone’s neighborhood,” bustling with economic activity that supports and reflects the diversity of our city, the plan outlines 3 themes:
1) Economic Diversification and the Future of Office
2) Expanding Downtown Housing
3) Public Life and Ground Floor Activation
Considering existing public realms, design a proposal for converting one particular site of your choice within the downtown Market Street corridor into a highly-utilized and diverse public space.
Find more details on this year’s design brief, along with context, suggestions, and more aspects to consider.
The competition has an online submission process with two options:
1) Individual Entry
2) Group Entry
All deliverables (drawings, model, and design description) must be captured in a Google Slides deck for presentation. To explain your thinking to the judges, we also require the submission a brief video describing the project (2 minutes maximum). In previous years, what many entrants have enjoyed most about the challenge is this opportunity to talk about the overall goals and aspirations for their design and their design process.
Find the complete design brief for the 2025 High School Design Competition here.
Feel free to copy or share the brief as needed.
Teachers, note that the brief PDF includes live links to resources and contacts, so distributing a digital copy to your students will likely benefit them.
Final entries were submitted on FRIDAY, May 16th, 2025
The awards presentation reception was SUNDAY, May 18th, 2025
E-mail info@afsf.org to be added to the list for other program updates.
This year we will award multiple prizes in each of 2 categories:
1) Best Design (single entrant), and
2) Best Group entry
Note that the option you chose to enter determined which awards you are eligible for.
In addition to the standard prizes, the first place winner in the overall superiority category receives a four-week Summer Pre-college Scholarship at the California College of the Arts.
Ryan Lee of Woods Bagot is once again the Competition Chair and Author. He is available to discuss the program with students and teachers.
Contact him directly with questions: 415-277-3041 ryan@afsf.org
Thank you for your interest in the HSDC. We eagerly anticipate your creative participation!
