In dense urban settings, community gardens are an invaluable public resource - they not only provide the opportunity for city dwellers to grow their own food, but they may also educate the wider community about organics, food security, and sustainability.

Pandora Park Community Garden Society invites student and professional architects, landscape architects, builders, engineers, gardeners and designers of all kinds to take part in Green Shed: Pandora Park Community Garden Design Competition. The goal of this international competition is to generate buildable designs for a storage shed and outdoor common space for a new community garden that will showcase sustainable building strategies and materials. The winning design will be built by a team of volunteers over the summer of 2010.

Pandora Park Community Garden is currently under development as part of the City of Vancouver's 2010 in 2010 initiative - a project to create 2010 new community garden plots across the city. The competition encompasses the northwest corner of the garden, an area that has been reserved for public amenities including picnic facilities, storage for garden tools, a beehive, and a small fruit tree orchard. With stunning views of the north shore mountains and surrounding park and garden, the site offers the possibility to design a space for contemplation and congregation, in addition to serving the gardens needs for seating and storage.

The primary objective is to demonstrate that natural, hand built, recycled, or otherwise sustainably produced building materials and technologies can be used in a contemporary aesthetic and community garden context. Entrants are therefore encouraged to use materials in innovative ways in the tradition of Samuel Mockbee's Rural Studio. Materials may include, but are not limited to: rammed earth, cob, straw bale, reclaimed wood, offcut dimensional lumber, and salvaged materials from any source. A list of identified salvaged materials from local builders and suppliers is provided.