Access is key to unlocking cities’ potential

Cities have the potential to cater to the full range of human needs and wants. The extent to which they do so depends on “access” – on whether their inhabitants are able to take advantage of all that cities have to offer.

The Schindler Award has the goal of improving access and overall mobility for all city dwellers, irrespective of their age, status or physical capabilities. To that end, it challenges young architects to think beyond form, light and materials and to focus on the needs of the people who will eventually inhabit the structures and spaces that they design.

This means taking account of the diversity of cities, and recognizing the right of everyone – children, young people, parents, workers, the elderly and people with special needs – to be able to move freely and to share and enjoy public spaces.

Visions for an enhanced and accessible “Olympic Park Berlin”

The task is aimed at transforming this somewhat neglected area of the Olympic grounds into a pleasing, functional and fully accessible sport and leisure compound. To achieve this goal, the following tasks must be fulfilled:

On the urban scale:
- Create a master plan to reorganize existing and new functions inside a perimeter of approximately 750 by 850 meters;
- Devise a new access route from the urban transit station and the carpark to the sport facilities and the ‘Waldbühne’.

On the project scale:
- Design a new sports and congress hotel for 150 guests;
- Upgrade the ‘Waldbühne’ to modern standards of ‘Access for All’

The jury felt it is especially fitting that the principles of ‘Access for All’ should be applied to a place used by the Nazis to symbolize their imagined superiority and policies of exclusion.

http://www.schindleraward.com