The AIA Young Architects Forum (YAF) and the AIA Committee on Design (COD) invites architects, interns, students, and allied design professionals (planners, landscape architects, contractors, interior designers, engineers, product representatives) to submit sketches to the international 2012 YAF/COD Ideas Competition.

In this unique design competition, submitters are asked to explore innovative design proposals for educating and encouraging Americans to live a healthier life. Obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, chronic depression, and certain cancers are the biggest public health epidemics of our time. Physical inactivity and unhealthy diets are responsible for more premature deaths than anything except tobacco use.

Today, the design and construction industry has a chance to be a part of the solution which combats our physically inactive and unhealthy lifestyles, similar to how architects and urban reformers in the 19th and early 20th century helped defeat infectious diseases like cholera and tuberculosis. Only instead of inventing life-safety codes, mandating adequate ventilation, or providing for sanitary drinking water; we can begin to retrofit our cities and communities as environments which promote active and healthier lifestyles.