What to get your head around

There is more to planning than parcelling land, more to the built environment than high-rises and houses, more to traffic engineering than infrastructure, more to building than structural solutions and calculating floor area ratios. There is also more to architecture than monuments and photogenic facades, more to housing than where you sleep, eat and watch TV, and finally there is more to urban quality than curbside cafés and public playgrounds.

If you cannot answer the “Hows,” “Wheres,” “Whats” and “Whys,” you are only halfway through. Be sure to stay on top of things by carefully considering process, project, scope, site and scale of competition project:

Process

There is more to entering a competition entry than submitting a project. The process backing the project is an essential part of the final result. This is the phase where you sort through potential ideas and solutions, where teamwork comes into play, where you share ideas with your academic advisors, and where problems are uncovered and defined. The process is indeed a true reflection of your academic effort.

Remember to share your process!

Project

The project is the actual competition entry. It is the culmination of all your efforts. It is what you will submit, and thus what will be reviewed, judged and put on public display. The project will be profiled on the “Futures of Cities” website, at the Futures of Cities student competition exhibition at the Royal Danish Academy, School of Architecture and at the IFHP Student Congress. The winning projects will be announced on 24 September 2007, at the joint event of the 51st IFHP World Congress and the IFHP 2007 Student Congress.

The project is your way to fame and glory!

Scope

Each team must specify which aspects of the Futures of Cities it wishes to address: planning, building, housing or urban quality, on a regional, urban or neighbourhood scale, construction of entire districts or individual buildings, entire housing blocks or individual housing units, proposals for securing urban quality of entire urban park systems or of a single square.

Let us know what to look at!

Site

There is no given site. Instead, each team has the opportunity to select, identify and work on a site that is most relevant to a particular problem or condition. In other words competitors are asked to name and illustrate the site they are addressing. You are to describe what city or neighbourhood, street or building lot, traffic interchange, square, housing block or unit that serves as the context for your design proposal.

Tell us where it’s at!

Scale

There is no given scale. Again, each team is to work on the scale which it finds most relevant for the context and challenge at hand. In other words the competition team is to select and specify the scale which best illustrates the design proposal. Let us know whether your proposal is at a scale 1:10,000, 1:5000, 1:1000, 1:500, 1:100, 1:50, or 1:10, or any other relevant scale.

Size it up for us!

Freedom is key

We trust you to choose your own scope, scale, site and context for your proposal for the futures of cities. Freedom is yours. Use it wisely!