After the war began, the IRS contacted us to develop an International Competition for Architecture and Urbanism Students, which, together with the support of the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Warclaw, Poland; and the Territorial Intelligence Center of the Adolfo Ibáñez University, we have called City of Irpin: The Future Horizon.
The fundamental idea of this international contest is to build a fresh, creative, innovative, free, and spontaneous conceptual image, without professional or economic distortions, for the future, for the reconstruction of a city that has been destroyed by the invasion of the russian army: Irpin.
A fundamental idea is the commitment of each of the participating teams, to think and imagine a new city as a phoenix rising from the ashes: deeply rooted in its customs and traditions; a careful and respectful city with its natural, sustainable, ecological, green environment, which aspires to enhance its status as a happy city, a city of life, work, rest, recreation, culture, well-being and peace.
International Contest Proposal
The fundamental idea of this international contest is to build a fresh, creative, innovative, free, and spontaneous conceptual image, without professional or economic distortions, for the future, for the reconstruction of a city that has been destroyed by the invasion of the russian army.
A fundamental idea is the commitment of each of the participating teams, to think and imagine a new city as a phoenix rising from the ashes: deeply rooted in its customs and traditions; a careful and respectful city with its natural, sustainable, ecological, green environment, which aspires to enhance its status as a happy city, a city of life, work, rest, recreation, culture, well-being and peace.
In this context, the essential objective of this international competition is to protect and promote these essential ideas to recapture and revive the Ukrainian and mainly the City of Irpin spirit.
The challenge of this new image of the city is that it has never been seen before, selecting some key aspects for its development and capturing a clear image of how these aspects are expressed in formal elements within the city, leaving behind old urban planning paradigms and replacing them with new points of view, conceptual, creative and innovative, to build a new urban space, which manages to mediate between the old conception of the dichotomy between public and private spaces, and separation of specific urban areas and integration of various functions, building a new transition space: the new collaborative urban space for future generations respecting the heritage ,
From those futuristic dreams, the main intention is to contribute, feed and enrich, with a breath of freshness and young energy, the projects that are being currently developed for the post-war Ukraine by commercial and public professional offices and professional teams of architecture and urban planning, both national and international, which are limited by many restrictions from reality. This is not a professional competition for established architecture and urban planning offices, but an opportunity for the young generations of architecture and urban planning students to look at a strategic urban challenge from a conceptual, creative, innovative, and artistic perspective.
To find and build a new model of conceptual creation for urban development through the work of the student teams led by architecture and urban planners that to build a new modality of work, not imposed by economist, business development priorities, not dominated by engineering logic of transport and a territorial ordering, free from a purely operational logic. Hence, the works submitted for the competition are not expected to follow any of the currently promoted concepts of urban development.
In this way each participating team, as part of the foundations and arguments of their proposals, must answer explicitly a handful of essential questions. This since there is nothing worse than constructing a good answer to a poorly formulated essential question: It is necessary to ask an excellent question to ensure an excellent response to the city’s problems. The opportunity presented by this international contest is to formulate very well a handful of essential questions that will make a difference with the other participating proposals, and will also have to confront and question the traditional canons with which are currently trying to understand and face the essential questions and challenges of our cities
In short, the contest challenges the participating teams to build a conceptual image of a city of an uncertain future fused with its essential pre-existing values and heritage elements that differentiate it from any other possible future city.
We plan to develop this contest, during the first semester of 2023, to carry out the process of review and selection of finalists and the award ceremony, at the beginning of the second semester. For this purpose, we want to know, in a preliminary way, the interest of your university in participating in this extraordinary experience, in order to estimate the volume of interested universities and the number of teams that will be registered by each of them, and to structure the process in the best way.
Each of the teams will be made up of students of architecture and urbanism and led by a tenured professor from the respective faculty or school of architecture. At this moment we are in the process of conforming and confirming the constitution of the International Jury that will review and evaluate our contest.
