Press release

Press Release

 The 11 juries of EUROPAN 15 have named on 47 SITES in 12 different European COUNTRIES*

- among 901 submitted PROJECTS  -

44 WINNERS, 47 RUNNERS-UP and 45 SPECIAL MENTIONS on the theme

Productives cities 2

 

The winning teams are officially announced on December 2nd, 2019, and the list of winning teams will be available online on www.europan-europe.eu

The juries named 136 rewarded teams –among which 44 winners, 47 runners-up plus 45 special mentions. The winning teams are based in 17 different countries – 2 thirds of them won in their residence country; 1 third of the teams hence won abroad. The teams that were most motivated to compete abroad are located in Italy (9 teams out of the 13 winning teams based in Italy won a prize on a foreign site), Germany (5 teams out of 9), Norway (3 teams out of 6) and Spain (8 teams out of 34).

The EUROPAN 15 competition – a European competition of urban and architectural projects leading to implementation, conducted in partnership with European municipalities, local authorities and clients– was organised as a joint initiative by 12 European structures. This session theme was: Productive Cities 2 prolonging the E14 theme. The participating cities bet on the return of the productive economy within the city.

The national juries drew up a shortlist of 230 proposals between July & October 2019. These jury sessions were followed by a European comparative analysis of the shortlisted ideas, which took place at the Forum of Cities and Juries held from Oct. 18th to the 20th, 2019, in Innsbruck, Austria. The final selection of the winning projects by the national juries was done by the end of November.

The 136 teams, the members of which are all younger than 40, are composed by 424 associates considered as authors of the projects and assisted by 115 collaborators. Among these associates, 67% are architects, 17% are urbanists, 4% are landscapers and 2% are engineers. The Master students allowed to participate in the competition with, at least, 1 professional are 8,5% of the associates and are spread among 14 awarded teams. The average age of the associates is 30 years old.

The winning and runner-up teams respectively receive a prize of 12,000€ and 6,000€, so overall 800 000€ are distributed.

The awarded projects have shown a strong interest from young European teams (which some of them are multidisciplinary) to create synergies between production and regeneration of the cities:

• How to think the city in terms of urban metabolism related to productive cycles and be sparing with environment and evolve from a linear to a circular economy?
• How climate change force to think about synergies between climate and production?
• How nature, including a productive part, can invest urban territories?
• How to create new proximities between living and working and create synergies between urban territories and everyday life?
• How to connect resources, mobilities, productive uses in order to create the conditions of urban equity?
• How the temporal processes of fabrication of the city can be compatible with the ones of production?

These are all the questions brought up by the cities to which the awarded projects gave innovative answers (projects) and proposals about their implementations (processes).

Beyond the competition phase in which several innovative and contextualised ideas are selected, and after a communication intermediary phase around the awarded projects and teams (exhibitions, catalogues, debates, workshops), the cities and their partners which proposed a site commit to follow some of the projects through urban studies, strategic projects and implementations.

During 2020, the winning teams’ portraits will be published on EUROPAN EUROPE website – www.europan-europe.eu. An exhibition of all the winning projects will be set up during the Inter-Sessions Forum in Fall 2020, to which the winning teams will be invited.

The European Results Catalogue will present the winning projects (winners, runners-up, special mentions) with the winning teams’ and juries’ points of view. Experts will analyse the results from the angle of the innovating proposals on the session theme. The catalogue will be available for sale (on the European website and in bookshops) and for free online consultation (low definition) next spring. You can preorder it from now on.

 

* the 12 countries who participated in Europan 15 are Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden.