Rio de Janeiro Cityvision Competition Winners Announced

Rio de Janeiro remains the hottest subject for architectural ideas competitions around the world right now. Just last week, we published the winners of the [RIO DE JANEIRO] Symbolic World Cup Structure competition, hosted by British organizers [AC-CA], and today we have received the results of the latest challenge by Italian architecture publication Cityvision, Rio de Janeiro: Two Presents, One Future.

The international competition was open to architects, engineers, designers, students and creatives and sought for visions of Rio de Janeiro's future. From the Cityvision competition brief: "A city, Rio, in which the sensory binomials that regulate and determine the daily actions and reactions of its citizens are directly related to the concepts of good and evil, wealth and poverty, happiness and sadness: two Presents converging towards a single Future."

The 68 received proposals (from all five contintens) have been judged by an international jury including Alejandro Zaera-Polo (chair), Jeffrey Inaba, Jeroen Koolhaas, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Pedro Rivera, and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia.

First Place: Ceu de Janeiro
by Donghua Chen (China)

"On January 1,1502, a Portuguese expedition first anchored by Guanabara Bay. They named this land Rio de Janeiro, meaning River of January. And people settled down. The society of settlement started to form in Rio. Settlement life existed long ago in human history. In a stable natural environment, people chose to settle down on certain land, to manage the society more efficiently with a centralized power. Rio was such a centralized-organizing and fast-running society that consists of a different hierarchy like a treelike, top-down network. Such ends up some vulnerable members among society, like the favela. They are always struggling for life improvement and conflicting with the local police or army. Also, the efficient settlement society led to the massive invasion to the natural environment. The environment become more and more unstable. It was so changeable that we could not lie in the settlement any more. As Rio was overwhelmed by the sea, it sinks in history forever. The brink of ruin always catalyzes the new hope. The unstable environment drives them to turn to another mode of society—nomadism. Because the sea has overwhelmed the land, the sky becomes the last domain for nomads. People renamed Rio de Janeiro as Ceu de Janeiro, which means the January Sky in English, to celebrate the rise of a brand new world. They bravely build up the floating houses, which can move from place to place as they loose anchor and camp again, to break away with the strong tie to the land and power, and to seek for a relatively resourceful and stable environment."

"First, different from settlement society, the nomadic Ceu is the being of multiplicity, from centralized management of power to self-organization, from priority for efficiency to coexistence of harmony, from layers of subordination to equality of pluralism. It doesn’t focus on monopoly or unity, but an interchanging environment or integration. Each one is heterogeneous but equal. They interact with each other and exist as an exterior connection. Second, Ceu is anti-pedigree and anti-center. In past, there is always a dependence between settlement and land, like the property system. In contrast, Ceu does not attach itself to the land or depend on any power. It is just like the game of Go or the universe, rather than the chess, the solar system or the tree. One belongs to himself, without any subordination. It is never a defined city, state or kingdom. Third, the science development,such as the material and information, provides the fundament for nomadism. Connected with super infrastructure and public facilities, people share resources from physical society, virtual cyperspace and natural storage. The fixed infrastructure points become a transfer platform for them. They will not obtain benefit or be deprived from it by old economical mode, such as land-rental or production-profit mode. Like the seeds in wind, to be spread and to sprout in different fields, they find a way to continue their story."

Farm Prize: Keep It Rio!
by Alessandro Nardacci, Alessandro Oltremarini, Federico Marchi

"- KEEP IT RIO! – The big events, under the development’s flag, keep on leaving the same disgusting models proudly signed by illuminated professionals. Them keep on failing against the urban and social problems of every guest country. The next chapter show Rio de Janeiro as the new sacrificial victim, accepting an extreme challange that sound like a showdown with itself. Our field of research moves between oppositions, contradiction and contamination of Rio. The impredictable and flexible oderness of the territory’s purpose depends on the behave of the population. It define the disgusting fail of predictability, main characteristic of any urban and architectural plan designed for the future of a city on develop that can’t exist as an ideal model for a society that is not yet ready. So in the relation between nature-artifice we can see the contrast between past and future interpretated as a scenario where the local nature is contaminated by the artifice of a global development, just a disgusting oppresion of the artificial modern habitat on a passive hystorical natural habitat."

"Our vision is about a post-event Rio where the clamour of world cup and olympics games is over and the city can just move on. The global invasion brought a status quo twisting where the rich owners of the city, bored by the beach and attracted by the fashion, moves to live in favelas and gradually transformed it by tastes and wellness. The poor people survive in the ruins of archistar’s masterpieces, left by the rich ones, waiting for the next twisting. The two opposite elements forcedly co-exist showing, on their half fase of twisting, the wonder of an absurde and labile equilibrium of contrasts, unique possible idea of development for a city that, no matter what, still being unique. KEEP IT RIO!"

Check the image gallery below to see also the nine Special Mention winners. For the complete list of Rio de Janeiro Cityvision entries, click here.

Past Cityvision competitions on Bustler:

• New York CityVision
• PFFF Inflatable Architecture
• Venice CityVision

All images courtesy of Rio de Janeiro Cityvision.