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A brand-new White House?

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One thing is for sure this political season: Thanks to the 22nd Amendment, there will be a new occupant of the White House come January, replacing George W. Bush after two terms. But what about replacing the residence itself? That’s the idea behind White House Redux, a competition sponsored by New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture that drew more than 400 entries from 42 countries.

‘The brief,’ according to the contest literature, ‘was simple: What would the residence of the most powerful individual in the world, the White House in Washington, D.C., look like if it were designed today?’

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There’s a nice symmetry in the competition’s timing that the organizers may not be aware of: This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Andrea Palladio, the Italian architect whose stately late-Renaissance residential work was a strong influence -- via Thomas Jefferson, in part -- on White House designer James Hoban. Somehow, in this era of smooth, liquid, digitally influenced architecture, I doubt the winner of the Storefront competition will be Palladian. Or even neo-Palladian. But you never know. E-Palladian, maybe.

Stay tuned: Culture Monster will let you know when the winner is announced, along with what we think about the design, on Oct. 2. A book on the competition -- including essays by Storefront director Joseph Grima and blogger and Dwell magazine editor Geoff Manaugh, both members of the jury with Columbia University’s Mark Wigley, architect Liz Diller and others -- will be released the same day.

--Christopher Hawthorne

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