COMPETITION _ Adaptable city is the theme of the Europan 12 session.
" Adaptability is the quality of a space that can be easily modified in harmony with the changes to which its use is subject or may be subject"
Europe’s cities are engaged in a radical transformation: they need urgently to reduce their ecological footprint to help resolve the energy crisis, combat the greenhouse effect and preserve nonrenewable resources. This transformation applies both to their morphology (form) and their metabolism (including all energy expenditure), and is highly dependent on the ways of living they provide. To achieve this, all these changes have to be thought out quickly, and that is why Europan 12 proposes to explore the question of time with a view to making the city more adaptable.
This entails, for example, providing new ways of sharing collective space and methods of governance. This requires a chronotypical approach, blending the spatial and temporal dimensions and, for example, establishing temporary projects for spaces. This also means developing a sensitive form of urban planning, where different places can be used at different times, and rethinking the quality of the spaces from that perspective. This raises the question of the “hospitality” of urban spaces and their transparency for users of the city. It is also important to think about intensive development projects, to connect them better with the realities of today’s city. It is also about considering the multiple uses the city, and in particular the question of the sharing and recycling of buildings, to avoid excessive consumption of space and thereby to promote a sustainable city by exploiting time in its full range.
Europan 12 is open to any team consisting of an architect in partnership or not with one or more professionals of the same or other disciplines (architects, urban planners, landscapers, engineers, artists, etc.) from a European country. Each team member, whatever his/her profession, must be under the age of 40 years old on the closing date for submission of entries.
Each team can enter submissions on several sites, provided that those sites are located in different countries and/or assessed by different juries (case of associate countries).
Content of the digital submission must be three A1 boards –594x841mm– should be laid out vertically and numbered from 1 to 3 in the top right corner. The top left corner is left blank on a L:60mm x H:40mm box in which the code will automatically be printed. The name of the city has to appear next to it. The content of the boards have to be:
Board 1 explains the urban ideas developed in the project with reference to the city’s concerns and the thematic orientations of the proposal.
Boards 2 and 3 present the project as a whole, highlighting the architecture of the project, and more particularly the relationship between the new developments and the site’s existing context, including three-dimensional representations of the project.
All the results for Europan 12 will be available online from December 13th, 2013, on the European website (www.europan-europe.eu).
Winners receive a reward of the equivalent of €12,000 (all taxes included) in the currency of the site’s country (at the exchange rate on the date of the announcement of the results).
The organizers undertake to abide by the decisions of the national juries and to pay the reward within 90 days of the announcement of the results.
The projects must be submitted by June 28th, 2013.
comment