Here in Rome there are a few “houses” dedicated to arts and culture: we have a Casa dell’Architettura, a Casa del Cinema, a Casa delle Letterature and so on. They’re mainly existing buildings, originally designed as country villas or even as an aquarium (that’s what Casa dell’Architettura was before it became what it is nowadays.), and then converted and reused as cultural spaces.

Since 2003, Chicago based ICARCH gallery’s been periodically launching art/concept design competitions for “a house for [insert name of personality of choice here]“.

Below you can see sample entries from past competitions for a house for Fernando Pessoa, one for Albrecht Dürer, one for Michelangelo Antonioni and one for Ingmar Bergman:

Ongoing competitions are for a house for Frédéric Chopin, one for Akira Kurosawa, one for Albert Camus, another one for Anton Chekhov…

Then they came up with a brilliant, contemporary idea: why not design a house for Lady Gaga, too?

Please send icarchgallery@yahoo.com ANY work, ANY size and ANY format that responds to the theme. You can send your work to this e-mail address. The deadline is June 1st, 2010. There is an entry fee of 50$ (25$ for students) payable by PayPal to admin@icarch.net. We will display all the works received on our website: www.icarch.net. We will also forward them to Lady Gaga, for her consideration. And we hope that if one proposal matches “her essence and her spirit,” (as apparently the dress that Armani designed for her did), she will build it! We are almost sure of it! We suggest you choose a real location for your proposal, since we think that this potential client will be quite able to build anywhere in this world. Let’s get Lady Gaga interested in architecture! We think she might enjoy our provocation very much, since architecture is supposed to be “frozen music.” So let’s bring together Dance and Music and Architecture through an adventurous, forward looking and exciting house for the ever changing Lady Gaga!

[via Y Magazine]