Organized by TCIP (Turkish Catastrophic Insurance Pool – DASK) for the fourth time with the aim of increasing the awareness for earthquake-resistant buildings in Turkey, Earthquake Resistant Building Design Competition was finalized with an award ceremony which was held on May 8. The competition began in March and received 76 applications from 51 cities. The number of applicant cities and universities had increased in this year’s competition; therefore, for the final stage, 24 teams that passed the preliminaries presented their building designs in front of the independent judges as small-scaled models that were built using the materials provided by TCIP. During the final phase, which was held at Ottoman Archives Kağıthane Building, models built by the finalist teams were tested on the seismic shake table, o tool used to simulate earthquakes.

Models that did not collapse and passed the earthquake test were later evaluated according to their economic and esthetic scores as well. Team Terebra from Dokuz Eylül University managed to win the competition by getting the highest total annual profit as a result of the cost-benefit analysis. Murat Kayacı, Chairman of TCIP and General Director of Insurance at the Undersecretariat of Treasury, presented them with a reward plaque. The university will also be rewarded with equipment support for the laboratory of its Civil Engineering Department. Karadeniz Technical University and Bursa Uludağ University won monetary awards as the first and second runner-up of the competition. Since the winner and first-runner up of this year had already won seismic shake tables in previous competitions, this year’s shake table award was given to Bursa Uludağ University as the second runner-up.