Register 9th May, 2018 | Submit 9th May, 2018 |
Dust to Dust
Redesigning Urban Life in Healthy Soils
BRIEF
Why have a competition on this particular challenge?
Currently 83% of the terrestrial biosphere is under human influence1 and 98% of cultivable land on earth is being farmed2. Two thirds of the world’s soils are already suffering a degree of degradation3. Meanwhile the expansion of urban land cover outpaces population growth. This expansion rate is unaffected by proximity to World Protected Areas. Such increase in the urbanisation of land, along rising populations and growing economic activity, is expected to sprawl built environment manifestations progressively4. This increases environmental vulnerability, fragments habitats, threatens biodiversity, and causes desertification5. The continued encroachment onto and the transformation of soils resulting from urban sprawl will significantly impact the sustainability and resilience of urban life. The urgency for design interventions to preserve and assist the formation of healthy soils within our cities is mounting. We cannot afford to continue to develop cities that compromise the ability of settled environments to provide the ecosystem services on which we depend.
New designs will need to promote innovative relations between everyday urban life, sustenance, and ecosystemic resilience. Such close relations demand that we consider integrating food production in built-up areas, that we leave open, or open up, surfaces to natural formation processes, that we account for how the materials associated with urban form and urban life decay, and that we keep blue-green space for ecosystem services accessible within our cities on a variety of private-to-public scales. This also concerns how we facilitate adjustments in our personal relations to ecosystem services. We must regard our social roles not as short (re)cycles, but as flexible and progressive processes in the long term.
We should foster the land we design and occupy so that we retain and improve the efficacy of soil benefits and accessibility in cities. How sustainable cities are designed needs to account fully for the fabric and social rhythms of the city and how these rhythms progress soil health.
Can a dispersed, less densely built-up or populated urban layout be as viable as one that is compact? The archaeology of Neotropical urbanism in the Americas is revealing alternative patterns of city building that have lived through long developmental histories. While we do not propose naively that ancient patterns are a solution for present-day predicaments, analysis of the long term history of these patterns makes it possible to imagine alternative dimensions.
What would a close relation to the role of soils in ensuring sustenance and ecosystemic resilience look like? If we allow for levels of density that gives more space to ecosystem dynamics, would this still result in effective patterns of occupation? How can dispersal maintain viable levels of social relations and productive intensity at the same time? Outline plans could either follow an interventionist or a blue sky/empty sheet approach. Proposals could consider, among others, low energy-intensity low-impact schemes, the promotion of natural material and naturally decomposing material requirements, the reinvention of vernacular practices, active travel, and the responsible integration of open space in everyday life.
SCHEDULE
Call and selection of outline plans (until Midnight GMT 9th of May 2018);
Charrette of selected teams with the interdisciplinary research and curating team 16-18 July 2018, at the Prince’s Foundation, London;
Exhibition of a selection of the best ideas at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA) in Norwich, UK.
Provisional timeline:
Call for outline plans until Midnight (GMT) Wednesday 9th May 2018;
Entrant’s registration fee payment deadline Midnight (GMT) 16th May 2018;
Interdisciplinary judging process (designers, policy, and research) May 2018;
Invitation for the charrette sent out by 5th June 2018;
Charrette workshop over several consecutive days in July 2018, hosted at the Prince’s Foundation, London, UK;
Development phase for final displays for exhibition, taking place over summer 2018;
Exhibition launch at SCVA: winter 2018;
Exhibition in winter 2018-19.
JURY
Professor Peter Gregory is the Chair of the Science Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society. Until recently, he was a Professor of Global Food Security at the University of Reading, where he also held the position of Pro-Vice-Chancellor. For four years, he was the Chief Executive of East Malling Research Institute, which specialises in the science of perennial plants.
Dr Matthew Hardy is Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism at the Prince’s Foundation, and a Senior Associate Tutor at the University of Oxford on the Sustainable Urban Development programme. He has helped establish INTBAU and is co-editor of the Journal of Urbanism.
Dr Christian Isendahl is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg. He has research experience in the Maya Lowlands, Central Andes, and Amazon regions, is member of the Steering Committee of Integrated History and future of People on Earth (IHOPE) and Co-Director of TruLife and Dust to Dust.
Dr Peter Kellett is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the Global Urban Research Unit (GURU) at the University of Newcastle. He is an architect and social anthropologist working on urban and environmental development regarding self-made informal settlements in the global south (Latin America), especially with disadvantaged groups experiencing acute resource restraints.
Lisa Law is an Associate Professor in Urban Geography and Design at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, where she is Director of the Tropical Urbanism and Design Lab. Her research critically interrogates the politics of city design in tropical towns and cities. She is also Editor in Chief of Asia Pacific Viewpoint, and has previously held research and lecturing positions in Australia, Singapore, and Scotland.
Henrietta Palmer is Deputy Scientific Director of MISTRA Urban Futures. She is also an architect and Professor of Urban Design at Chalmers University of Technology. In this and a previous professorship at the Royal Institute of Art, she has worked on the future of cities in the global south, urban transformation processes, and the visual language of change.
Julia Stegemann is Professor of Environmental Engineering at University College London. She is an international expert in waste management and collaborates in the CircEL circular economy hub. Her work focuses on the development of sustainable technologies and systems to return industrial by-products and residual wastes to the resource loop and to achieve of “end-of-waste” status.
Dr Benjamin Vis is a Research Fellow at the University of Kent specialising in Maya Archaeology and Urban Geography of the built environment. He is the Director of TruLife and Dust to Dust.
Prof. Pieter van Wesemael holds the chair in Urbanism and Urban Architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology, working on sustainable evolutionary urban development. For two decades he was partner in the Architekten Cie and INBO (Amsterdam), leading the consultancy and design department in urban design, areao development and spatial policy.
WEBSITE
http://www.dusttodustcompetition.org./