Honourable Mentions
177: THE TRANSFORMATION TOWARDS A "HAPPY VILLAGE"
PEARL RIVER DELTA, CHINA
By Katja Engel Zepernick and Anett Grønnern Olsen
Arkitektskolen Aarhus, Aarhus C, Denmark
Focus is the problems raised, when the growing cities “eats” the small villages. The view is on the value and development of micro communities. The strategy is small changes seen over time in a coordinated process, integrating general architectural values and social strengths into the restructuring.
The project is developed after 7 weeks of travelling in the Pearl River Delta, China. The cities are expanding due to economical growth and migration, while the existing villages have the quality of being low and extremely dense. The villages now offer cheap housing for the migrant workers. A qualitative restructuring of the villages can be seen as a sustainable alternative to mega projects.
The proposal is characterized by open ends and more concrete decisions regarding structure and form taken in the local neighbourhoods involving the local people and NGO’s. The project points out two important sites - the village block and the edge, and three strategic interventions – to reorganize, to add and to combine. A toolbox is formulated as a pattern language used locally to relate phases and types of transformation to social interaction.
The project is relevant, focused and well presented, although the step from tool to project is not clearly expressed, missing examples of stakeholders and architectural outcome.
176: HARBOR/HARBOR
By Wayne Congar
Tutor: Mark Wasiuta
Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, New York, United States of America
Lack of land for affordable housing, parks and free spaces is one of the common problems in the modern, growing metropolises. The result is more growth in the city edges, far from the services and transportation centres of the city cores.
Harbor/Harbor challenges this problem by reuse of salvaged commercial ships for mixed use development. Instead of exporting the ship wreaks – more than 800 every year - to other areas of the world to be broken up in pieces, they are replaced from the outer harbors and coastlines into the old and history loaded but often empty port areas of the central metropolises. The industry related to the breaking down is converted into repair and refitting of the ships. The redefined old ports inhabited by reused ships become green power plants of solar and wind energy. And they become ‘loudspeakers, broadcasting to inland’, raising the quality of life in the surrounding mixed income and complex communities.
(Mark wasn't present during the award ceremony, which is why there is no photo of him)
99: A 50s CADILLAC AUTOMOBILE WORKING MUSEUM, HAVANA, CUBA
INSIDE THE WALLS OF HAVANAS CASTILLO DEL MIRRO
by Ka Hung Cheng (Jackson)
Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, United Kingdom
The submission deals with the creation of a working and ever expanding museum of Cadillac car from the fifties in the historical castle Castillo del Morro in Havana.
Because of the embargo the Cuban government prohibited sale of vehicles to private citizens and people had to keep and repair their old cars, so the city has a big collection of vintage cars.
The project gives a new life to the old castle and adds a new quality to the city, which will attract car lovers and tourists. The meeting between old and new and the ornamentation is analysed and described in an interesting way.
The presentation in the poster is very lively done.
69: A MICRO COMMUNITY SOLVING GLOBAL PROBLEMS
by Bernando Araujo, Èder Andrés Barrientos Leite, Isabel Caldeira Brant, Mateus Andreatta Barros and Thiago de Campos
Tutor: Maria Lucia Malard
Escola de Arquitectura, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
The submission is dealing with a very important problem of urban development in many countries, the shantytowns in the outskirts of the big cities, in known as favelas. The considered site is the favelas of the big city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil, where up to 10 people must live together in unstable houses of maximum 50 m2 with no access to clean water, without sewers or access to public transportation.
After a brief analysis the submission presents a strategy based on a housing solution with integration of water and sewers, which increases the density and gives new spaces to the public, a transport system based on buses, cable cars and subways, a local production of electricity and a local production of food - pigs living in vertical blocks The presentation is well organized and easy to understand.
61: TEXTILE HOUSE INTEGRATED WITH RESIDENTIAL STRUCTURE IN PORTO
by Pernille Birkel
Tutor: Camilla Hedegaard-Møller
The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Department 2, Copenhagen, Denmark
The purpose of the submission is a study of how a residential structure can benefit from being part of a public function.
The site is in Porto in Portugal, situated in the outskirts of the city centre, where the city edge meets the sloop of the river and the landscape, a dense area dominated by small scale industries and traditional housing buildings. The submission analyses the site and places a textile house, which is a combined small scale production facility and education centre, integrated with housing into the existing urban fabric. The textile is also the starting point of the analysis, as textile plays an important role for the residence structures in Porto.
The poster, three models and a booklet present the architectural idea of a building, where the public, the semi public and the residential functions are weaved together in a beautiful way.
53: BIOPOLIS
by Johan Ericsson, Helena Ahlblom and Karl Brorsson
Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, Lund, Sweden
The idea of the proposal is to create a solution to the future of mankind in one single seed. As an alternative to the existing dependency of natural resources the BIOPOLIS present the self sufficient city. It is a fusion of urban living and agriculture, inhabited high density vegetation and a genetically designed urban growth.
The BIOPOLIS is nicely presented in the poster and a model as a green structure, using DNA technology to genetically design this structure. The submission shows an analysis of how it can be done. The structure gives way to the urban plan, the housing and the agriculture in a tight knit system.
The submission is an innovative and radical approach to the theme of the competition.
30: ELEONAS OLIVE GROVE
WHEN THE PAST BECOMES THE FUTURE :
THE UNFOLDMENT OF THE FUTURE CITY SCAPE
By Christina Alexopoulou, Georgia Apostolopoulou, Stela-Dania Armeni, Nikitas-Dimitrios Gavoggianis, Kosmas Gavras, Danai Diou, Ioanna Polymenea, Christos Sazos, Haris Sgouridou and Athanasia Vasdeki
Tutor: Panagiotis Tournikiotis
National Technical University of Athens, School of Architecture, Athens, Greece
Eleonas explores the city’s need for expansion and new areas of economic growth near the old city centre. An area of the size of a metropolitan park is pointed out in the middle of Athens. It is an area where gentrification and arbitrary constructions coexist with the olive tree forest and fragments of the old city’s civilization glory – the ‘Iera Oelos’ ruins. The site is considered as the last hope for the city to acquire a big, natural green core.
As the city structure actually is undergoing a dematerialization, Eleonas tries to deconstruct the typical block and redefines a new structure in a greater scale. A mountainous form is constructed on the top of the city as a continuous walk filled with public squares, open air activities and natural elements. The walkways end up in the city developed underneath. At points of information and special allocation tall buildings erect from the ground.
The architecture is concept driven and futuristic, but rather schematic and probably unrealistic, while the presentation is beautiful - a single and visual gesture includes diagrammatic analysis and explanations within a total layout.
