Europan 15 Results Catalogue - Productive Cities /2

Preface Anna Catasta President of Europan The 15th session of Europan took place when the exceptional situation caused by the medical emergency of the Covid 19 pandemic had not yet occurred.

European cities proposed 47 sites from 12 European countries to attract submissions inspired by the theme of “Productive Cities”, developed by young urban, architectural and landscape design professionals aged under 40.

Places and contexts that had been marked by earlier purposes and practices were rethought to harmonise with the new priorities of urban locations, notably as living entities with their own metabolism, around the competition’s three main topics: Resources, Mobility, Equity.

1241 teams registered for the Europan 15 competition.

11 national juries, some of them working together, undertook the analysis and evaluation of the 901 projects submitted. The juries met in two sittings in the second half of 2019.

The quality of the submissions is evidenced by the large number of projects shortlisted following the first sitting (230, i.e. more than 25% of the proposals).

In mid-October 2019, the European Cities and Juries Forum, which was held in ­Innsbruck (AT), provided an opportunity to explore the themes and proposals further by bringing together the juries and site representatives to debate issues that went well beyond local concerns alone.

Together, the juries selected 136 projects —44 winners, 47 runners-up, and 45 special mentions. These projects offer a long-term vision of the possible metamorphosis of the sites, but many of them are also process-projects that suggest modes of development over time. Indeed, building the productive city requires all the actors to unite around the ideas proposed and to contribute to actions that go beyond sectoral priorities and are as much political as spatial, as much public as private, as much local as global.

The projects presented in this catalogue are divided up into families of sites according to themes, and include the winners and runners-up, but also projects that the 11 juries perceived as significant. Articles by experts who followed developments throughout the session compare the projects, and elucidate their meaning in relation to the central theme.

Over the space of a few months, much has changed in Europe and around the world.

The future of our cities depends on their capacity to respond to new and significant challenges, such as those relating to public health and unforeseen emergencies.

The relationship between the domestic dimension and public space is changing, the dichotomy between working life and personal life becoming less marked.

More than ever, the reality of Europan is embedded in the need to support and enhance the processes of communication between municipalities and young professionals, and to contribute to the design and implementation of new ideas. This will be a particular challenge for the next session of the competition, Europan 16, which will focus on the theme of “Living Cities”.