As the annual SterlingOSB Zero/RIBAJ competition celebrated its 10th anniversary, the 2025 competition entitled Powers of Ten, challenged architects to explore the principles of scale. Entrants were unrestricted by building standards and were free to play with the concept of scale and design a structure from competition sponsor West Fraser's SterlingOSB Zero.
This year's commended winners, Olivia Dolan and Sem van der Straaten, designed their Monolithic Playhouse; a set of eight wooden monoliths linked together with SterlingOSB Zero to create one unified structure. Here Olivia and Sem explain the inspiration behind their entry and what they like about SterlingOSB Zero.
Q. What inspired your design for the competition?
When we were looking into the ideas of scale originally, we wanted to do something that was big. The we reconsidered and thought we'll do something that was small. We wanted to play on the idea of something that you would initially see as being like a monolithic object, like a cathedral or a church.
We would then try and scale that down to see how you could interpret it in different ways. We decided to have eight different categories of elements, and we wanted to have a very playful scene where people could crawl under or come on top of them. We put all these elements together to produce a versatile play stage; that was the concept idea.
Q. As architects, what do you like about SterlingOSB Zero?
The benefit of OSB is that you can use it outside as it is durable; it opens up more possibilities for design.
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