CCA Announces Winner of 2008-2009 James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City Competition
By Bustler Editors|
Monday, Jun 16, 2008
Related
Montréal, 5 June 2008—The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), in collaboration with the Cities Programme of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), announces the winner of the third international competition for the James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City. The jury awarded the price to Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray, the 2008-2009 Stirling Lecturers for their proposal entitled “CAOCHANGDI Urban Rural Conundrums : Off Center People’s Space in the Early 21st Century Republic of China - A Model for the Momentous Project of the New Socialist Village.”
Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray, principals at Studio Works in Los Angeles, were selected from 43 applicants of 15 countries, ranging from senior scholars and practitioners to emerging voices. The bi-annual James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City competition was launched in 2003 to inaugurate a unique forum for the advancement of new critical perspectives on the role of urban design and urban architecture in the development of cities worldwide. Previous winners are Eyal Weizman (2006-2007) and Teddy Cruz (2004-2005). Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray will develop their research project and present the Stirling Lecture in autumn 2008 at the CCA in Montréal, and at the London School of Economics in autumn 2009.
The Winning proposal
The jury was impressed by the range, originality and quality of the proposals, their international scope, critical links to practice, and engagement with key political, social and design issues in contemporary cities. Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray’s winning proposal opens up an original discussion of issues of development in China, going beyond a concern with extreme densification, and addressing a dynamic urban context in a way that is both historically-informed and clearly oriented to emerging social, political and cultural processes. Jury members highlighted the innovative character of this project, its collaborative strengths, and its experimental approach to practice.
The 2008–2009 Stirling Jury
The Stirling jury consists of James Corner (Founder and Director of Field Operations, New York; Chair and Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design), Ann Pendleton-Jullian (Director, Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University), Matthias Sauerbruch (Architect, Sauerbruch Hutton Architects, Berlin and London), Fran Tonkiss (Associate Director, Cities Programme, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)) and Mirko Zardini (Architect, Urban Theorist, and Director of the CCA).
Speaking about the goal of the Stirling prize in the context of the CCA’s mission, Mirko Zardini stressed that the “CCA actively seeks opportunities to collaborate with academic institutions such as the London School of Economics which have demonstrated a commitment to raising the level of critical discourse research and writing that informs innovative and even radical tendencies in architecture and urbanism today. Beyond this, for the CCA, the theme of the city is central to our concerns, because as more and more of the earth submits to urbanization, we are confronted with a virtually inexhaustible source of new problems and potential investigations.”
Finalists
The winning proposal was selected from a strong field of finalists that included:
Gilles Clément and Miguel Georgieff, landscape architects, for “Urbanodiversity, keys for the birth of a Symbiotic Man”, which argues for the city`s potential as a refuge for natural diversity, and the capacity of new urban practices that renew energy and other resources to ensure this biodiversity.
Keller Easterling, Yale University School of Architecture, for “Extrastatecraft”, which analyses forms of global infrastructure—free zones, cable networks, high-speed rail in sites in South Korea, Japan, Dubai and Kenya—as spatial and political forms that go beyond nation-states and constitute complex sites of activism.
Susannah Hagan, School of Architecture and the Visual Arts, University of East London, for “Between data and design”, which addresses the relationship between environmental datascapes and strategies of urban design, drawing on case studies in Barra Funda in São Paolo and the Royal Docks in London.
The jury also commended the following projects for emerging ideas and innovative potential: Nicholas de Monchaux, University of California, Berkeley, for “Spacesuit City: evolution, informality and urban design”, bringing together architecture and digital design intelligence to explore the effects of small “spatial catalysts” in urban environments; Laura Kurgan, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, for “Million dollar blocks”, examining the prison system as the “distant exostructure” of contemporary American cities; and Peter Mörtenböck, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Vienna University of Technology, for “Informal markets: architectures of survival”, exploring informal markets in Eastern European cities as networked urban sites of “counter-globalisation”.
James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City
The James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City were conceived in homage to architect James Stirling, who believed that urban design is integral to the practice of architecture and a vital topic for public debate. Niall Hobhouse, Governor of the LSE and Chair of its Advisory Board, reflected on the intent of the Stirling Lecture Prize and its potential impact on urban studies around the world: “The initiative to found the Stirling Lectures competition was based on a belief that at certain moments in history the most pertinent thinking about the social consequences of architecture and urbanism comes not from the centers of current debate, but rather from the periphery. The LSE Cities Programme and the CCA have a shared commitment not only to the development of mainstream theory and practice, but also to knowledge currently being produced at the margins, theoretically, culturally, and geographically, which holds promise for the responsible and sustainable development of the urban domain worldwide.”
www.cca.qc.ca/stirling
Share
0 Comments
Comment as :