How are Europan projects assessed?

Didier Rebois (FR) — General Secretary of Europan

Before discovering the winning projects in this 15 th session of Europan, it is perhaps worth reminding readers how the proposals submitted for the competition are assessed. In fact, right from the creation of Europan 30 years ago, great importance has been attributed to this phase of assessment, and to the award —through the different national juries— of some 100 prizes per session (winners and runners-up combined), plus special mention projects without prizes, out of the approximately 900 projects submitted. The filtering process in this assessment phase is important and the choice of the winning teams is a strategic issue not only for the teams themselves, but also for the partners who participate in the competition. Indeed, in its founding principle, Europan is called a “competition of ideas”, and the primary objective is to reward innovative projects devised by young European professionals of architectural, urban and landscape design. However, it is also a competition “followed by implementations”, in which the aim is not only to reward innovative ideas, but also to convert those ideas into more developed design processes and ultimately into real operations. This paradox partly explains the time and effort invested in choosing the teams that will be awarded the “Europan label” for their ideas, and in some cases go on to receive commissions for a second, so-called “operational” phase. The juries have the difficult task of analysing the three panels the teams are required to submit, picking out projects that offer an innovative perspective, an original vision, of the question raised by the site, within the framework of a global theme (the session topic), and awarding the Europan “label”. At the same time, however, the selected projects need to offer a strategy that sets out key orientations for implementing their ideas over time, within a given context. The best projects in a session are those that meet both these requirements.

JURY SESSION IN BELGIUM

JURY SESSION IN FRANCE

JURY SESSION IN NETHERLANDS

©Daniela Mossbauer

JURY SESSION IN AUSTRIA JURY SESSION IN CROATIA

COMMON EUROPEAN RULES FOR ALL THE COMPETITIONS WITHIN A SESSION… BUT WITH VARIANTS THAT REFLECT COMPETITION CULTURES IN THE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

Teams from different countries to ensure a process of acculturation One of the founding principles of Europan— to encourage the movement of young professionals of urban, landscape and architectural design within Europe— was to open up the competition on a site, regardless of its location, to all these professionals, whatever their country of residence, provided that they have a degree from a European university or school and… that they are aged under 40. Since the launch of Europan, the proportion of projects submitted by teams foreign to the site has not varied, remaining constant at around 50%. And the proportion among the winning teams is roughly the same. At a time of growing problems Juries are made up of of identity in Europe, it is independant experts who encouraging to see an undiminished desire among have freedom to choose young people to tackle the winning projects cultures other than their own, and if they win, to test their skills away from home. This colours Europan in a particular way, through projects that blend the cultural identity of their authors with the social and economic culture of a given context in another country. And it is not unusual, for example, to see Spanish teams attracted by sites in Scandinavia, or Eastern European teams interested in sites in Italy. Opposites often attract! Though in other places, we equally find complicity between similar cultures in the choice of sites. It is important to specify that the projects are anonymous and that teams are required to submit their ideas in English or the language of the country where the site is located, which makes it difficult to identify the nationality of the authors.

Independent juries Europan is designed as a federal structure, with national secretariats coordinated by a European entity. It is therefore the national juries that assess all the projects submitted for the sites in a given country. These juries are made up of independent experts —the site representatives do not sit on the jury— who have freedom to choose the winning projects, primarily

JURY SESSION IN ITALY

on the basis of their quality and innovativeness rather than simply their immediate operational feasibility.

Technical committees with varying roles The juries are assisted by technical committees which do the preliminary work, analysing the content of the projects and informing the juries of any infringement of the rules. Depending on the competition philosophy in the countries concerned, the role of this committee can vary in importance. In countries where the number of sites and submissions to be assessed is limited, the custom is for the jury to be responsible for the preanalysis of the projects, the committee and the jury are almost the same entity. By contrast, in France, where there often are numerous sites and submissions (overall, several hundred projects to assess), the technical committee is made up of numerous experts who spend time pre-analysing all the projects before the juries meet for the first time. This committee explains the content of the submissions to the jury, by means of analysis sheets and an oral presentation. The task of these experts is to present all the projects analytically, without making any selection. It is the jury’s job to decide. Nonetheless, the committee contributes to the process of understanding and analysis throughout the assessment process.

Jury membership based on the competition priorities Each jury has 7 or 9 members, depending on the individual country’s choice, since not all juries have the same number of projects to assess. Their membership consists of 2 or 3 experts representing public and/or private commissioning entities, 4 or 5 experts representing the design professions (landscape architects, urbanists, architects), and one other figure whose role is to guarantee a diversity of viewpoints. Overall, out of the 100 or so jury members in the Europan 15 session, there were 8 representatives of public authorities (Ministry, Region), 8 municipal representatives (urban officials), 6 project owners, 3 urban managers, 13 urbanists, 4 landscape architects, 31 architects, 15 architecture teachers, 1 architectengineers, 1 philosopher, 1 researcher, 1 journalist, 1 industrial designer, 1 publisher… And some 10 of their number of former Europan winners. Each jury must include foreign members, a proportion that can vary, but requires a minimum of two for a seven-member jury, or three for a nine-member jury. Out of the 7 members and 2 substitutes on the Austrian,

INNSBRUCK (AT), E15 CITIES & JURIES FORUM — DEBATES

INNSBRUCK (AT), E15 CITIES & JURIES FORUM — WORKING GROUP

Belgium and Norwegian juries, there were 5 foreigners, making them the most international of all the juries. The Europeanisation of the juries is also visible in the total number of foreign members per nationality. 8 foreign members were French, 4 Belgium, 3 Dutch or Swedish, 2 Finish, Italian, Danish, Swiss or American, bringing a plurality of perspectives alongside the national members…

An autonomous jury beginning with a dialogue with the site representatives To begin with, however, the juries —whose members, as we have said, are independent of the municipalities— meet the site representatives in order to understand the issues and the questions that the local actors want the competitors to answer. These discussions, which may include visits when the country’s geography is suitable, are very important. And although the municipalities do not ultimately decide who will win, they give their opinion on the projects they have studied and analysed from their particular perspective.

Dual purpose of A first phase in which ideas are shortlisted recognising the talent of The first stage in the assessment is for the juries young European teams, to shortlist the projects and of identifying projects that they judge to contain good ideas. In an open that are potentially competition like Europan, strategic for the future of many projects are either designed too quickly or a specific territory do not develop sufficiently strong ideas. The 11 national juries in Europan 15 therefore had the task of shortlisting around 25% of the projects submitted. There were around 230 shortlisted projects (an average of 5 projects per site), so the selection remained open. However, it can sometimes take several days for the juries to complete the task of weeding out all but a quarter of the submissions. The discussion at the start between the municipalities and the juries is very important. In some countries, such as Germany or Austria, the projects are shortlisted jointly by the municipality and the jury. Some of the jury members travel to the sites and, with local experts and officials, choose the projects that will remain in the competition for the 2 nd assessment phase. In other countries, such as France or Spain, the jury meets municipal representatives and listens to their views on the submissions, before independently taking their decision on which projects to shortlist.

An intermediate European forum attended by municipalities and juries Since Europan is a competition procedure not quite like any other, after this first phase all the jury members and all the representatives of the sites proposed for the session, meet at European level for a “Cities and Juries Forum”. The objective of this event is shift scales and, through intense discussions, which for this session took place in Innsbruck in Austria, to divide the ideas shortlisted on the different sites into families. With this debate over 230 projects that are anonymous and still unranked, the juries and municipalities together can develop a shared culture based on comparisons between projects drawn from different jury shortlists. This Forum is always an opportunity for a multiplicity of discussions at different scales, laying the groundwork and developing a new perspective for the second jury phase.

Award of multiple prizes In this second stage, the shortlisted ideas are ranked and prizes are awarded to the projects considered most promising. Often, the juries meet the site representatives again at the beginning of this final session, and ask them which of the projects still in the race they favour. However, this does not mean that the decision of the jury will necessarily mirror the preferences of the municipalities. As experts, the jury members may rank the projects differently. Europan juries are above all a place for debate between a group of individuals who are informed by local experts but represent the spirit of Europan, with its combined focus on the global and the local, ideas and processes, quality projects and modes of production. They know that these projects must represent committed, emblematic positions, visions based on the theme, and at the same time offer a potential starting point for negotiation with local actors. Within an average prize budget per site of 12,000 for a winner and €6,000 for a runner-up, the juries have the right to award several prizes per site and, depending on the quality, within a different hierarchy from one site to another. So on one site there could be two winning projects, plus a runner-up and special mentions, whereas on another —where the jury found that the quality of submissions was not as good— it might

award one runner-up prize and one special mention. Aware of the issues, juries have extensive freedom of decision. And in this second phase, all the juries adopt the same approach, i.e. comparing the proposals on each site for the dual purpose of recognising the talent of young European teams, and of identifying projects that are potentially strategic for the future of a specific territory. Ultimately for Europan 15 —out of the 47 sites in the session— the 11 juries awarded 136 prizes, consisting of 44 winners, 47 Juries play the role of runners-up and 45 special intermediaries in explaining mentions, i.e. an average of almost one per site in each their choices and category. For the juries, a winning organising the transition project is one that is from a general process to innovative in itself and is at the same time well matched a local process to its context. A runner-up project will possess the same “double qualities”, but will be judged by the jury to be weaker in one of them. And special mentions are often awarded to projects in which the idea stands out, but the contextualisation is perhaps not sufficiently developed. It should be noted that in this category the interpretation may vary from one jury to another. For example, the Finnish jury awarded 4 special mentions for 2 sites, whereas the Norwegian jury assigned only one for 3 sites. This shows that the “personality” of the juries obviously plays a role in the choice of awards. However, it has been known for a special mention project to lead on to an operational process.

Verification The Europan competition rules are strict: anonymity is one of them, of course, but there are also rules specifying the documents to submit and particular methods of presentation. When an infringement is identified —apart from non-compliance with anonymity, which means automatic elimination— the jury is informed and decides whether or not to keep the project concerned. After the jury has reached its decision, the envelopes containing the identity and the documents proving the eligibility of the associates and team

members (age, qualification, independence from the sites and jury members) are opened and compliance verified. There have already been cases where an initially prize-winning team has been eliminated for failure to comply with the rules.

Assessment as a filter for choosing excellence and as a necessary method of guaranteeing the municipalities teams that meet their requirements Following this description of the objectives and operation of the Europan juries, it is easy to understand why the process takes time, especially as countries with few sites (a country may have only one site) and therefore fewer submissions, have to follow the same assessment timescales as those that have many (up to 9 sites and several hundred submissions). The amount of work is not the same, although the task of assessment is taken equally seriously. The juries are therefore a qualitative filter between a large volume of submissions and a small number of high-quality and innovative prize-winners. In all, in Europan 15 the juries awarded prizes slightly over 800,000. Moreover, their responsibility is considerable, since it is their task to ensure that the local site representative get teams capable of managing their ideas for the time it takes to bring about urban, landscape and architectural change. After the two jury sessions, their members often take part not only in the prize awards but also in the initial meetings between the municipalities and the winning teams. They play the role of intermediaries in explaining their choices and organising the transition from a general process to a local process.

When the winning teams present their projects to the site representatives in the different countries —often in just a few minutes— the quality of expression and the clarity of the ideas is striking, especially considering that the average age of these young teams is around thirty. On the other hand, deciphering the ideas expressed in writing in the submission panels is more complex for a jury, and not always easy to grasp beyond the initial interpretation of the “images” of the project. It should be noted that for Europan 15, the winning teams were requested to submit additional material —a video of 3 minutes maximum. It is a document for communication but also to understand the issues developed by the teams in relation to the context and the proposed process. Finally, it should be pointed out that the Europan 16 theme “Living Cities — Metabolic Vitalities and Inclusive Vitalities” has its origin in the projects submitted for Europan 15 and presented in this catalogue. Many projects chosen by the juries indeed emphasize the need to reconsider —on the challenges of productive cities— the synergy between artifice and nature, not to oppose them, but to seek their possible, and even necessary synergies in the emerging European city.