THE EUROPEAN FORUM OF RESULTS for the 8th session ofEUROPAN took place in Dordrecht in the Netherlands from 29 June to 1 July 2006 at the Energiehuis, a former power station renewed by the city for cultural events.  It was opened to the young professional of architectural and urban conception and especially to the 143 prize-winning teams (61 winners and 82 runners-up) in the 19 European countries taking part to the session. It was also attended by winners of the previous sessions who have implemented, representatives of the 74 sites involved, organizers and members of the 15 European juries.

Europan 8– a European competition for urban planning and architecture with subsequent construction – was launched on 7 March 2005 on the theme “European urbanity and strategic projects”.

For the over 1600 young professional teams who produced plans for the 74 proposed sites, EUROPAN offered the opportunity to analyse an urban site from a territorial and architectural perspective.

After the inauguration of the European exhibition of Europan 8 results on Thursday 30 June 2006 at 18h00, the forum lasted two days on Friday the 30th of June and Saturday the 1rst of July, organised on the following scheme:

On Friday 30 June, 6 simultaneous working groups debated on the Europan 8 winning ideas. The projects were discussed according to the 5 themes of the session: Urbanizing with infrastructures; Generating the new; Recycling urban fabric; Building with nature; What sort of urbanity for inhabitants?

The people not attending the working groups took part to one of the four architectural visits proposed (walk in Rotterdam and cruise in fast ferry to Dordrecht; colourful walk through Dordrecht, the oldest city in Holland; Dordrecht and the theme of water; coach trip along the architectural highlights of Rotterdam).

On Saturday 1 July, four parallel debates gathered Europan 8 and former winners, renowned clients and international experts on the following themes: Nature as structure of the urban landscape; Public space, interface of the urban and architectural levels; Densification and evolution of the housing morphology; Programmatic invention and process.

The aim of those debates was to confront various experimented points of views on the strategic aspect of the winning projects.

Those debates were framed by lectures of former winners who have implemented and received the first Europan Implementations prize on the theme “What have they become?”

• Lecture 1: City and mobilities, S333 Architecture + Urbanism (Netherlands), first prize, implementation in Groningen (Netherlands)
• Lecture 2: Contextuality, architect, Babled-Nouvet-Reynaud Architects (France), second prize, implementation in Saintes (France)
• Lecture 3: Housing for whom? MAAST architects (France), 4th prize, implementation in Bordeaux (France)
• Lecture 4: Suburban architectures, TOA Architects (France), 5th prize, implementation in Mulhouse (France)

At last, the participants were proposed to choose between the presentation of the European network of young architects YEA and the preparation to the closing party (massage, music, relaxation…).

At the end of the day, the five winners of the first Europan Implementations prize were rewarded and a big closing evening with all the participants of the forum will follow at the Kunstmin.

The participants to the forum also had the possibility to see the European exhibition of the prize-winning projects of the 8th session.

We are pleased to invite you see a selection of pictures made by Theo Bos on the website www.forumdordrecht.nl: Click here