The City Competition-2014

The City Competition-2014

In the Year of Culture 2014 the Information Agency of the Union of Architects “Architect” supported by of the Environmental Chamber of Russia and the International Academy of architecture (IAAA-MAAM) launched a social-cultural study – the City Competition project. The decision to establish the City Competition was adopted at the meeting of the Council on the eco-architecture under the Environmental Chamber of Russia held on 10 December 2013 in the Civic  Chamber of the Russian Federation. 

The RF presidential decree reads: “To draw attention of the society to the issues of culture development, preservation of cultural-historic heritage and the role of Russian culture globally I hereby order (…) to hold the year of the culture in RF in 2014”. "The City competition is in full compliance with the mission of the year of culture 2014 and contributes to preservation of historic urban environment as a foundation of urban sustainable development; release of perspective scenarios of regional development and strategies of territorial planning; investments in fundamental architectural and urban planning solutions.

Any world city willing to present its successes and achievements, problems and possible solutions to the general public and professionals is welcome to participate in the competition.

The project is aimed at identifying possible perspective scenarios of city development with participation of experts who collaborate through the method of interdisciplinary communications. The Institute of synergy of culture and social sciences / ISCSS is developing respective methodology within the study’s socio-cultural aspect. In 2014 the main theme of the City Competition is “The city image” which combines cultural-historic, architectural, ecological, socio-economic and humanitarian studies.

Preservation of the historic urban environment and its identical recreation in current projects of complex territorial planning, urban planning and architecture is a key factor for city sustainable development. Thus the competition will draw attention of the public, state bodies and potential investors to problems and accomplishments of cities and allow recreating identical cultural and historic centers of development in them.

To achieve a potential of city sustainable development by architectural, ecological, historic-cultural, social and economic studies;

To draw attention of federal and regional leading experts in various fields to development of achievements and solutions of city problems;

To establish professional communication making available development of new mechanisms of interaction and experience exchange between Russian and foreign cities on the interdisciplinary level;

To promote development and implementation of projects aimed at sustainable development of cities with participation of specialists and organizations of wide spectrum of professional competence;

To define principal cultural-historic and socio-economic specific features of cities, to recommend standards of identity for further successful regional development;

To participate in the competition a city’s authorized representative shall fill in an application form proposed by the organizers which contains details on key aspects of the study: architecture, ecology, historic-cultural specific features, economy and industry, education, public life, information resources. The authorized representative is a representative of a government municipal body, business entity or initiative community.

Experts use application details to analyze and evaluate potential of participating cities in compliance with specially developed methods.  

Theexpert commission recommends scenarios of development specified with regard to identified priorities and available resources to the participating cities. Development scenarios are worked out at design workshops, implemented in identical models and displayed to the public. 

Nominees of the firstpreliminary phase are most identical expositions of participating cities that represent their development trends.

A special jury selects scenarios that are most promising for practical implementation and choose winners and runners-up of the competition. 

The competition program envisages discussions, methodical workshops and exhibition events that accompany phases of the competition selection which is followed by announcement of results at the award ceremony.  

April – complex program of design workshops and master classes dedicated to identifying and recreating identity of participating cities, working out scenarios of their development and choice of means of notifying general public and professionals of the achieved results.

Expert commissions and the jury of the City Competition are currently formed; among their members are reputable representatives of state bodies and public organizations, recognized professionals, including outstanding Russian architects. Competition selection is based on a combination of expert and public opinions. Studies of competition participants may form a platform for considering resumption of the Federal programs of city support at the Civic Chamber of Russian Federation.