Europan 10

Monday 19 January the tenth session of Europan opens. You will find on our website, www.europan-europe.com, information on the theme, the sites, the calender and the rules and will be able to register and download the full site’s files of the competition.
We hope that many of you will take part in this session on a topic – inventing urbanity : regeneration, revitalization, colonization – that is strategic for the 62 European cities that propose attractive sites and wait for your innovative ideas and projects. 
You will find underneath some synthetic information on the competition.
Europan counts on the young urban design professionals to reveal their ideas and their talents,and on the projects’ innovative power to install urbanity in each site’s specific context.

Good work - and good luck - to you all!
Launching 19 01 2009
End of registrations 29 05 2009
Entries 29 06 2009
Results 18 01 2009
19 participating countries and 62 sites
Belgique/België/Belgien
Denmark
Deutschland
Eesti
España
France
Hrvatska
Ireland
Italia
Latvija
Magyarország
Nederland
Norge
Österreich
Polska
Portugal
Schweiz / Suisse / Svizzera / Svizra
Suomi-Finland
Sverige

The generic theme of Europan 10 – Inventing urbanity - specifically involves collaboration with the cities and urban developers in the organising countries. Indeed, the ultimate aim of the European vision of the city is to make society, in other words to bring together people of all conditions and origins. However, the dominant trend towards individualisation, the quest for autonomy, cannot be ignored. This is precisely the contradiction that Europan addresses: on the one hand wanting the city – i.e animation, communal life, people – and on the other side wanting intimacy, privacy, home and the immediate circle.
TOPIC
EUROPEAN URBANITY
SUSTAINABLE CITY AND NEW PUBLIC SPACES
Urbanity can be defined as a shared way of experiencing the city and its functions but also as a way of envisaging city space in order to create the conditions for people to come together in communal places: public space.
But where does public space start and where does it stop? Can neighbourhood and local spaces be seen as part of the public domain? And also, can we use the term public space for the new communal spaces - such as shopping malls, stations and airports?
But Europan is engaged also in the qualitative goals of sustainable development. How can density and residential quality be reconciled, how to be both in the city and in the nature? How can sustainable projects able to both create urban intensity and respect the environment be imagined?

These are the questions young European architecture and urban planning professionals will have to answer by choosing a site amongst three types of sites: those that must undergo a strong transformation (regeneration), those that must both keep their identity and redynamise their programme (revitalization) and those that must undergo a development (colonization).

www.europan-europe.com