Results of the Europan 12 – International architecture competition to bring to the fore Europe’s young architecture and urban design professionals, and to publicise and develop their ideas. Its objective is also to help cities and developers, which have provided sites to find innovative architectural and urban solutions for the transformation of urban locations.
Europe’s cities are engaged in a radical transformation: they need urgently to reduce their ecological footprint to help resolve the energy crisis, combat the greenhouse effect and preserve nonrenewable resources. This transformation applies both to their morphology (form) and their metabolism (including all energy expenditure), and is highly dependent on the ways of living they provide. To achieve this, all these changes have to be thought out quickly, and that is why Europan 12 proposes to explore the question of time with a view to making the city more adaptable.
This entails, for example, providing new ways of sharing collective space and methods of governance. This requires a chronotypical approach, blending the spatial and temporal dimensions and, for example, establishing temporary projects for spaces. This also means developing a sensitive form of urban planning, where different places can be used at different times, and rethinking the quality of the spaces from that perspective. This raises the question of the “hospitality” of urban spaces and their transparency for users of the city. It is also important to think about intensive development projects, to connect them better with the realities of today’s city. It is also about considering the multiple uses the city, and in particular the question of the sharing and recycling of buildings, to avoid excessive consumption of space and thereby to promote a sustainable city by exploiting time in its full range.
