International Ideas Competition 2004
Shrinking Cities - Reinventing the City


Whether in the USA, Russia or China, whether in South Africa, Germany or
Kazakhstan: shrinking cities are everywhere. Massive population and job
losses convulse neighbourhoods, cities and regions. Hundreds of thousands of
buildings stand empty, infrastructures collapse, urban life erodes.

The shrinking of cities is an involuntary process. Attempts to date to shape
or guide it have been inadequate. Often, they have failed because the
inherited instruments of city planning and urban development tend to be
ineffectual in this context - assuming they are even available. This calls
into question our established understanding of the city and of urban
development.

Shrinking Cities is a project initiated by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes
(Federal Cultural Foundation, Germany). In january 2004, the project, in
cooperation with the architecture journal archplus and the journal domus,
will announce an international and interdisciplinary competition, which has
been endowed with altogether ? 120,000. Its objective is to identify
innovative approaches capable of qualifying the urban transformations
associated with the phenomena of shrinkage and to develop new ideas about
the city based on the specific qualities of shrinkage itself. Might a hidden
potential be harboured within the undesigned or the unplanned - even a
utopian one?

The competition is interdisciplinary and experimental in orientation.
Projects may range from the smallest physical intervention all the way to
plans for large-scale regional development, and may entail the recasting of
legal norms or encompass novel forms of urban communication. A project may
take the form of social critique or even a political utopia, designed to be
incorporated into the physical or communicative space of the city.

In order to tap into new fields of action, representatives of the most
diverse professions - organised into interdisciplinary teams - are being
invited to compete: anthropologists, architects, artists, economists,
directors, graphic designers, landscape architects, lawyers, media
designers, sociologists, stage designers and urban planners, as well as
local initiatives. (Students are excluded.)

Registration for participation is possible until April 15, 2004
(www.shrinkingcities.com). The deadline for the submission of project ideas
is April 30, 2004. At the end of a two-stage process, the jury will select
12 works for further elaboration. The competition works will be published in
detail in the architectural journals archplus (Germany) and domus (Italy),
and prizewinners will be featured in an international exhibition and
accompanying catalogue.

Jury members include artist & architect Azra Aksamja (Sarajevo/Princeton),
graphic designer Ruedi Baur (Paris), cultural studies researcher Regina
Bittner (Dessau), architect and urban researcher Stefano Boeri (Milan),
architect Anne Lacaton (Paris) and art theoretician Georg Schцllhammer
(Vienna).

The territories of the competition comprise four urban regions: Detroit
(USA), Halle/Leipzig (D), Ivanovo (RUS) and Liverpool/ Manchester (GB), each
of which has already served as a case study for an international analysis
performed in the framework of the 3-year research and exhibition project
Shrinking Cities, launched fall 2002. Besides the journal archplus, project
partners include the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau as well as the Galerie fьr
Zeitgenцssische Kunst Leipzig.

For additional information about the project Shrinking Cities or about the
competition: www.shrinkingcities.com.