Audi Urban Future Award: Exhibition in Istanbul envisions tomorrow’s
cities
Five architecture
offices present scenarios for their metropolitan regions Two-week
exhibition is basis for jury’s decision Presentation of the Award on 18
October in Istanbul
Future visions at the Audi Urban Future Award exhibition 2012 in
Istanbul
Ingolstadt/Istanbul -
Tomorrow’s urban life and mobility are key issues for Audi. The
exhibition for the second Audi Urban Future Award shows how people will
live and work in their cities in the future. From 12 October five
international architecture offices are presenting their visions in the
Hasköy Spinning Factory in Istanbul. The exhibition opens officially
today and will continue until 26 October.
The five renowned architecture
practices from the metropolitan regions of Boston-Washington,
Istanbul, Mumbai, the Pearl River Delta and São Paulo are
communicating their ideas for the ever-expanding cities of the
future. Here it becomes clear that traditional concepts of
mobility are outdated, that rapidly growing megacities require
creative solutions. Urban dwellers move through their city as if
in an adventure playground. They use parking spaces that can be
flexibly substituted by green spaces. They are mobile below the
ground and in the air.
Each of the five
architecture practices is presenting its vision for the future in its
own space. Visitors are taken away to the labyrinthine streets of Mumbai
or get to know the purely functional infrastructure of the Pearl River
Delta, which neglects the quality of life for people. They understand
why the American dream has got lost between Boston and Washington – and
how it might be possible to regain it. And they experience the noise and
chaotic traffic of the megacities São Paulo and Istanbul.
As all the proposals
clearly demonstrate: Every city is different, but many of the issues are
the same. The exhibition shows the main trends that will determine
tomorrow’s metropolises around the world. In the future, too, arteries
and intersections of traffic can be expected to mark large cities in
which, the architects believe, automobiles will continue to play a major
role – though this role will change.
The ideas were produced
by the architecture practices CRIT (Mumbai), Höweler+ Yoon Architecture
(Boston/Washington), NODE Architecture & Urbanism (Pearl River Delta),
Superpool (Istanbul), and Urban-Think Tank (São Paulo). The architecture
office NKBAK from Frankfurt created the architecture of the exhibition
in close cooperation with Stylepark, the curator of the Audi Urban
Future Initiative.
The Award presentation starts the specific
implementation of an idea An interdisciplinary jury will award the prize
worth 100,000 euros to the best vision on 18 October 2012 in Istanbul.
It is looking for proposals that convincingly show how urban structures
can shape the interaction between mobility and architecture in an
attractive and sustainable way. This task was defined by the Audi
Insight Team: nine Audi experts from strategically important departments
who have participated in the whole process of the Award, from the
briefing to the presentation. They transfer into the company the
insights that result from this collaboration. The aim is to learn more
about the future of cities and what that means for the automobile of
tomorrow.
The Award presentation will take place on
the evening of 18 October 2012 on the Suada, an event location in the
middle of the Bosphorus between Europe and Asia. And the project will
continue: On the basis of the winning proposals a detailed city dossier
will be produced with data such as demography, infrastructure and
resources – a set of operating instructions, as it were, for
implementing the idea in the winner’s metropolitan region.
Partnerships with the New Museum (New
York) and Istanbul Design Biennial The New Museum in New York City is
partner of the Audi Urban Future Award. In the context of this
cooperation a number of panel debates will be held under the motto
“Ideas City Istanbul”. Amanda Burden, director of the New York City
Planning Department, will speak at the exhibition opening on 11 October,
and discussion groups will be held on 12 and 19 October with the author
Suketu Mehta; the founder of Kickstarter, Yancey Strickler; the founder
of Architizer, Marc Kushner; the founder of Urbanscale, Adam Greenfield;
and others (www.newmuseum.org/ideascity). Audi is also a program partner
of the first Istanbul Design Biennial, which will be held from 13
October to 12 December 2012: www.istanbuldesignbiennial.iksv.org
Exhibition on the Audi Urban Future Award
2012 in Istanbul:
Address: Hasköy Spinning Factory, Kirmizi
Minare Sok, 5, Hasköy, Istanbul
Official opening: Thursday, 11 October
2012
Opening hours for visitors: 12 to 26
October 2012, daily 10 am to 8 pm
