Register 21 February 2018 | Submit 21 February 2018 |
European Prize for Urban Public Space 2018
Call for projects
BRIEF
One of Europe’s great contributions to the world has unquestionably been its particular way of understanding and experiencing urban public space. For millennia, the Old Continent has been producing cities on a human scale, long-lived but always dynamic, and tending to cultural diversity and civic awareness among their inhabitants. Public space is a physical form laden with non-material political values and potent social, economic and historical meaning.
Given the challenges presently being faced by an increasingly urbanised world, defending the European model of the city, far from being a mere exercise in nostalgia, is now more appropriate than ever. When urban sprawl is expanding with unprecedented momentum, when climate change is in good measure a product of the resultant urban mobility, and when the social fractures in cities are more and more evident, public space continues to be the best terrain from which to deal with the main problems arising from the urban phenomenon.
A call for entries is now being made for the Tenth European Prize for Urban Public Space, 2018. Since 2000 this biennial honorific award has aimed to recognise, promote and publicise examples of good practice in dealing with the many challenges faced by public spaces in European cities. The Prize aims to support the open, compact city of universal access, guaranteeing harmonious coexistence among its citizens, a mixture of uses, and sustainable mobility, preserving the historical memory of places, and favouring participation of citizens in projects designing shared spaces.
True to its cause throughout ten awards, the Prize considers all kinds of interventions aimed at creating, recovering or improving the democratic quality of the urban spaces we share and is jointly presented to the authors of the projects and the cities or other promoters of spaces assuring improvement in the lives of citizens.
SCHEDULE
15 January – 21 February 2018
Online registration and submition period.
20 March – 12 April 2018
Online evaluation of the Jury.
18 and 19 April 2018
Jury meeting at the CCCB.
June 2018
Announcement of the award results at the Prize-giving ceremony, at the CCCB.
The Prize
The European prize for Urban Public Space is a biennial, honorific competition which recognises the creation, recovery and improvement of public spaces whose condition is understood as a clear indicator of the democratic health of our cities. With this new award, the Prize—now consolidated as a privileged observatory of good practice in projects that testify to the prolific construction of public spaces around Europe—will be presented for the tenth time.
The Prize upholds an open, compact city of universal access, guaranteeing harmonious coexistence of citizens, mixed uses, sustainable mobility, preserving the historical memory of places, and favouring the participation of citizens in the design of its shared spaces.
JURY
Olga Tarrasó, representing the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB)
Peter Cachola Schmal, director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM)
Matevž ?elik, director of the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
Angelika Fitz, director of the Architekturzentrum Wien (Az W)
Hans Ibelings, historian and architecture critic (Amsterdam/Montreal)
Juulia Kauste, director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture (MFA)
Ewa P. Por?bska, architect and architecture critic (Warsaw)
Francis Rambert, director of La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (Cité)
Ellis Woodman, director of The Architecture Foundation (AF)
David Bravo, representing the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB)
