Architecture week A5 in Munich 16.7.-24.7.2010
Call for competition entries for the A5 prize
Transition.Interruption.Motion | Urban landscape
Every two years the Bavarian BDA (Association of German Architects) hosts the Architecture Week.
In addition to Munich, the regional associations throughout Bavaria are actively involved. The goal is to create a high-profile public forum for building culture in Bavaria and to encourage people to take a closer, critical look at the quality of planning and building with view to taking responsibility for society and the environment.
In 2010 the Architecture Week will take place for the 5th time.
The current title of the A5 Transition.Interruption.Motion describes the delicate balance between conserving and changing and the process-based transformation of our built environment, which we can actively shape.
In Munich the A5 will focus on a critical examination of the built environment within the scope of the urban landscape of Munich, the city peripheries and the area beyond Munich's administrative boundaries.
urban landscape
The city in its enclosed form is dispersing and spreading out beyond the boundaries. City and countryside do not contradict one another, they are currently weaving themselves, in a complex form of coexistence, into an urban landscape. This phenomenon is visible on a global level and is based on common social trends.
Munich neither ends at the Altstadtring (the ring road around the old town), nor at the Mittlerer Ring (the central ring road).
Some of the TU Munich (Technical University) locations, Munich airport, commercial centres, residential areas and the Munich swimming lakes are situated far beyond the city borders.
Today, the city does not just convey one image. It no longer describes urban life in a compact city. A wide variety of living environments, as well as financial and social relationships are expressed in diverse scenarios of the city that exist side-by-side; high-rise buildings in wide open spaces, the area near the airport as a place for an excursion, new single-family houses behind the motorway noise barrier, a segment of the old town close to the science city, the large commercial area next to the sheep-grazing meadow.
In the peripheral urban spaces, in the suburbs and metropolitan areas, new kinds of cities are developing, which will be explored and discussed using fresh definitions: Metapolis, network city, Zwischenstadt, edge city, Tussenland, urban landscape. The spaces within the urban landscape are one of the central challenges today for urban planning and architecture. The Architecture Week A5 Munich will explore these urban peripheral spaces in Munich under the following topic headings:
1. Fiction and tradition
The urban landscape in the region of Munich does not express itself in specific images. In spite of this or precisely because of this it contains extremely dynamic areas of growth, highly-frequented leisure and consumer spaces and much sought-after residential property. Which desires do these spaces generate? Why does the new community square look like the shopping precinct in the outlet centre, or like the film set for the TV series Marienhof? What image of the city are they based on? Which fictive concepts can be developed that take both the nature of the place and the latest developments into account.
2. Movement and networking
The term "urban", no longer only describes a pulsating density of overlapping utilizations and spaces but also the functional networking, the timely accessibility, goal-oriented mobility and informative communication. The proximity to mobility hubs determines the commercial success of a city and its inhabitants.
How are the mobility spaces of the city environment represented?
How do they generate a city?
How can they be devised as public spaces?
3. Neighbourhoods and scales
A large variety of living environments, commercial and social relationships are expressed in the fact that different city scenarios and scales coexist side-by-side. The conference centre next to the baroque chapel, the motorway intersection next to the gentian meadow, the kebap shop next to the research laboratory of the Nobel Prize winner, the sewage treatment plant behind the pinewood.
What potential does this new city chapter provide?
What questions are associated with it?
4. Inside and outside
The description of a city as having an inside and outside, a centre and a periphery, a core city and satellites, is based on the model of a radial-concentric expanding city. An urban landscape however perceives itself as a patchwork of different city quarters of equal importance.
How does this way of reading the city create references and boundaries between the individual sections? Do we as architects and planners have to pay the same attention to each of these parts?
Is the principle of centrality still tangible?
5. Uses and utilization
In the context of the urban landscape we mostly only perceive the setting up of a sequence of areas that have been allocated a single function to be monofunctionalized spaces. The commercial zone, the area of single-family houses, the motorway intersection. However the urban landscape does not only reveal niches and open spaces in between that are suitable for differentiated appropriation, it is also dynamic and heterogeneous.
How is the city utilized in this context?
6. Planning methods and the potential of architecture
Urban landscape often presents itself throughout the country as a conglomeration of generic spaces without a perceivable local reference or a visible creative drive. On which planning methods are these areas based?
Which methods and approaches does architecture provide us with to develop spaces whose atmospheric qualities are consistent and who make the urbanized landscapes perceivable and worthy of experiencing, as different worlds to be lived in that exist alongside and in relationship to one another?
7. Landscape
Landscapes are ecologically valuable compensation areas for the cities. In today's urban landscape they are integrated into an urban system of usability and intensive utilization of surface area. The small sections of city and landscape side by side are developing contrary to the concept of the European compact city.
Can an urban landscape qualify as a counterpart to a consolidated city in the sense of a sustainable development?
What role do landscape areas play here?
The A5 prize Munich
Competition organizers:
Within the scope of the Architecture Week A5, the Association of German Architects for the region Munich-Upper Bavaria is calling for competition entries that examine the theme of urban landscapes in the context of the above-mentioned topics.
Participants:
The competition is open to people working in all professions.
The prize will be awarded irrespective of the discipline.
There are intentionally no limitations regarding profession, age and the number of authors of the submitted work.
Both individuals and working groups may participate.
We particularly welcome the intensive involvement of the institutes of higher education, who we call on to examine the spatially tangible urban phenomena that are presented and to document their work according to the competition requirements.
Style and character of the contributions:
Entries can consist either of contributions that have already been completed or works that have been developed especially for the competition.
The works should take into account phenomena typical of the Munich cityscape and also find their own position within the current discourse.
The format can be freely selected however it should be suitable for presentation to a broad audience: architectural design, film, photographic work, music, text, spatial intervention, among others. We particularly welcome contributions by interdisciplinary working groups.
Documents to be submitted:
The procedure for determining the winner has two phases. The following documents are required:
1st Phase
Submission of the work in the form of a conclusive exposé.
max. 2 DIN A3 posters with drawings, photos, text etc.
max. 2 DIN A4 sheets of paper containing additional explanations of the work or the project
and / or: 1 film, max. length 3 minutes in which the drafter explains the project on location
and / or: 1 object, model, max. size and height DIN A3.
2nd Phase
20 works will be selected from the submissions. These works will be presented to a large public within the scope of the Architecture Week and the jury decision-making process will be open to the public. In the second phase, the selected works should be portrayed in a manner suitable for a public presentation. The way in which the individual works will finally be presented in the context of the Architecture Week A5 will be agreed on together with the drafters of the works.
Deadlines:
Submission date for phase 1 contributions
Monday, 26.04.2010
The date of the postmark applies.
Submission date for the phase 2 presentation documents
Monday, 21.06.2010
The date of the postmark applies.
Address:
BDA Bayern e.V.
Geschäftsstelle
Türkenstraße 34
80333 München
Jury and awarding of prizes: The jury will be international and interdisciplinary.
The public jury session will take place during the A5.
In the Architecture Week from 16. - 24. July 2010 the names of the selected winners will be announced officially and presented publicly. The prizes will be awarded in a ceremonial context.
Prizes: 1st prize: 2.000 € 3 special recognitions: each 1.000 € The jury reserves the right to distribute the prizes differently.
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MunichMunich, Germany
