Besides de competition itself, the initial objective of Europan is to give shape to the concept of a Europe in which young people can make an innovative contribution to architecture, urban design and housing, by organizing a federation of European countries around competitions of architectural ideas and exchanges between professionals in the field. In that perspective, each session is the occasion of three European events that enable discussion, exchange between architects, city representatives and experts to enrich their common or complementary and cultures on the European city.
Forum of European Results, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 30-31 May 2008
To close the Europan 9 session, a European Forum combinated with the international exhibition of results, will be held in Santiago de Compostela in Spain next 30 and 31 May 2008.
The forum will include debates on Europan 9 prize-winning projects and former Europan implemented projects in a perspective of public space, little working groups on the prize-winning projects classified in thematic families, and debates related with a workshop organized the week before in Galicia with 25 preselected prize-winning teams.
The international exhibition will display all the 132 prize-winning entries and a presentation of the sites.
This forum will coincide with the publication of the European catalogue of Results.
This forum is opened to the Europan 9 participants, national Europan secretariats, Europan 9 and former Europan winning teams, site representatives, jury members and construction industry professionals. Experts of the technical and scientific committees will conduct comparative studies of the prize-winning projects.
Europan invites all th 132 prize-winning teams of the session to take part the forum. In that then sence, each participating team receives an amount of 450 Euros to take in charge travel, accommodation and registrations expenses. In order to get the refund, they have to send back to Europan Europe a document available at y.conan@europan-europe.com
PLEASE, BOOK YOUR PLANE TICKETS AND RESERVE YOUR HOTEL ROOMS VERY QUICK!
You can contact the two travel agencies indicated on the website of the forum
COMPULSORY REGISTRATIONS, PROGRAMME AND LOGISTICAL INFORMATIONS ON THE WEBSITE:
www.europan9.xunta.es
Cities and juries Forum, Catania, Sicily (Italy), 30 nov-1 dec 2007
The Cities and Juries Forum which took place last 30 November and 1 December in Catania brought together representatives of the juries and of the sites in a European event from which the general public is absent . It offered the occasion for reflection, at European scale, on the projects pre-selected by the national juries.
Members of the European scientific committee met to acquaint themselves with the 383 anonymous projects that had been short-listed out of 1752 entries by the different national juries. With the assistance of a group of experts , they established a thematic classification of the projects by taking into account the problems raised by the session and the ideas proposed. For this, they used a comparative method . Their role was to make clear the “thematic families” into which the pre selected projects fell and to constitute material for European discussion for the site representatives and the members of the juries. This was done in order to give the latter some points of reference among the interesting ideas that emerge from the whole session.
Around 20 % of the projects with a strong conceptual quality, have been discussed and compared anonymously, after having been debated by each jury. This forum enabled to elicit a common culture of assessment to establish a final choice that has been then finalized in a second session hold by national juries. This event thus allowed for informal exchanges between juries and site representatives who were not present at the judgement.
The forum took place in the trade center "The Ciminiere" in Catania (Italy, Sicily), a former industrial agglomeration of sulfur refineries, working until the end of the Second World War, nowadays converted in an architectural complex, designed by architect Giacomo Leone Uberti.
On Friday, architectural visits in the historical centre and in the Old Monastery of Benedettin iwere proposed for the participants not attending to the working groups.
The closing party on Saturday evening took place in the Old Monastry of Benedettini. One of the largest in Europe, the latter is more like a palace than a religious building, an aspect that is probably due to close links with the Benedictine monks and the Catania nobility. In the eighteenth century it was one of the most important cultural centers in the whole of Sicily, attracting many visitors who were amazed by the luxury and the pomp of the building. It is now the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy for the University of Catania..
Who was invited to the Forum?
* Elected representatives and officials responsible for urban policy in the 73 Europan cities.
* Members of the 16 national juries: professional in the fields of architecture and planning, in the business of commissioning, scientific professions or concerned with urban policy-making
* Members of the Europan Europe and national organisers.
Forum of Sites, Berlin, December 2006
260 people attended last 1 and 2 December in Berlin the European Forum of Sites, Before launching of competition, this Forum attended by the city representatives of the session proposed sites, the national Europan structures and experts, is held to create exchanges and debates over sites.
Its aim is to finalize the programs of the competition sites and to create a sites’ thematic classification. It is a matter to involve cities and urban developers, contracting authorities, in the European Europan process and to ensure that the different partners in the session share a common culture.
The general theme « European urbanity » is connected to the questions raised by the sites which have been classified into four categories: possibilities for extension in the sustainable city, networks of et mobilities and interconnexions, local mutations and densification, opportunities for public spaces in urban territories.
Lively and comparative discussions were engaged during a first day of workshops on the sites, grouped into thematic categories.
On the day after, a plenary meeting enabled discussion on the insertion of public spaces in urban. Those three debates, summarized on the pages “topics” of the Website, deal with the questions asked by the Europan 9 sites in a transversal way.
The first debate, “Urbanity of housing, between city and nature”, dealt with one of the main subjects of Europan. How to create urbanity in housing districts while responding to the demand of individual housing and proximity of nature?
The second debate on “Open spaces as new public spaces” questioned the new types of public space in suburban cities. The latter have their own morphology coming from functionalist townplanning. How to think new publics spaces linked to the existing but which would not be imitations of the old city centres?
At last, the third debate on the theme “From the network to the street” dealt with the question of mutation of the networks in order to give them urbanity. In a sustainable approach, it is important to consider the mobilities in their diversity and with less focus on the car. The aim is thus to respond to the demand of various mobilities according to the different places of the city the walk through. This has an impact on the networks but also on all the organisation of the city.
The rich discussions of this forum enabled the sites representatives and the national structures of Europan to work again on their programmes and to finalize their files.
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