3rd International Bauhaus Award 2004

Presentation of the 3rd International Bauhaus Award 2004 23rd October 2004

On 23rd October, Jan-Hendrik Olbertz, Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs for the state of Saxony-Anhalt presented the third International Bauhaus Award on behalf of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.

This year’s award called for projects that deal with “Transit Spaces” – new urban spaces which, through globalisation and transformation processes, are marked by a new extent of abrupt change, uncertainty and insecurity, and where new spatial orders with a transnational range are superimposed on local and regional structures.

The works chosen are distinguished in particular by their innovative, exemplary, original and interdisciplinary approach to the fields of architecture, art, photogra-phy, urbanism and the cultural sciences.

Participating in the competition were over 200 works from more than thirty coun-tries, including e.g. Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Columbia, Croatia, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Iran, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Spain South Africa, The Netherlands, Thailand and the USA. The pre-liminary jury chose 9 entries, which were presented in person in a public staging to the main jury on 23rd October at the Bauhaus Dessau.

Winner of the 3. Internationelen Bauhaus Award

The 1st Prize was awarded to: Matthew Barac, David William Southwood, Simone Le Fèvre

From Township to Town. Urban Change in Victoria Mxenge TT

Victoria Mxenge, a settlement located in Khayelitsha at Cape Town’s metropolitan periphery, provides an informal silhouette against which the journey from apartheid to the ‘Rainbow Nation’ is staged. Framing the research task as the challenge of understanding the order of change, the authors have reconstructed the shanty town as an extended moment in time and space rather than a snapshot. Victoria Mxenge’s Metabolism has been dissected in a four-part thematic study that attempts to bring the conditions of transition to account: the planning context and discourse, consumer culture in the townships, the urban vitality known as Africity and the tension between tradition and modernity in South Africa’s emerging cities.

Matthew Barac studied architecture at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Today he writes for many magazines (e.g. Elle Decoration, Architectural Review, World Architecture) and teaches at Magdalene College, Cambridge. David William Southwood studied art at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg in South Af-rica. Today he studies at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin Weißensee. Simone Le Fèvre studied architecture at the University of Cape Town. Today she teaches at University of Cape Town.

Jury declaration: With this prize, the jury would like to honour a multi-faceted project by a commit-ted team that addresses one of the central problems of humankind – the habitat of the disenfranchised. This is, however, realised without nostalgia and with good deal of self-mockery. The phenomenon of urban poverty and hope was ap-proached with marked sensitivity and a many-sided philosophical complexity. The great thing about this work is that the heart of the project focuses on the people. For future work, the jury advises counteracting the danger of slipping into a voyeuristic perspective, and the development of concrete strategies for positive change in these urban spaces

The 2nd Prize was awarded to: Christopher A. Marcinkoski (USA), Andrew T. Moddrell (USA)

Recombinant urbanism: emerging patterns of spatial production

What we are witnessing in contemporary patterns of urban growth, particularly in the United States, is a shift towards the production of totalized environments within the envelope of individual spatial products, regardless of size, scale or basic typological intention. The condition appears to stem from a characteristic of recombinability seen almost uniformly in contemporary spatial products such as ATMs, gas stations, big-box stores, single family homes, cellular communication towers and distribution warehouses. The position of the work presupposes the production of these totalized urban environments as indicators of broader trends within – but not limited to – contemporary American urbanism.

Christoper A. Marcinkoski and Andrew T. Moddrell both graduated with an M.A. in Architecture at / in Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. C. A. Marcin-koski was awarded the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Foundation prize in 2004. A. T. Moddrell was awarded the Yale University School of Architecture Feldman Prize 2003/2004.

Jury declaration: An impressive, far reaching and at the same time grotesquely shocking analysis of an urbanisation that happens without a city. A real eye-opener for the mem-bers of the jury. The quality, premises and political message are rare. The jury offer the following as a critique and stimulus towards further work: The critical potential of the analysis could be more strongly expressed. The worldwide adop-tion of these shocking patterns should be exposed.

The 3rd Prize was awarded to: Suzan Kelly Shannon

Rhetorics & Realities – Addressing Landscape Urbanism. Three Cities in Vietnam.

The investigation questions the contemporary possibilities of developing an ur-banism that evokes an intelligence of place – encompassing geographi-cal/topographical and climatic realities, tangible and intangible heritages, the messiness of everyday urbanity and possible futures. It has promoted a new model of dispersed urbanism and urban scenarios that develop further the emerging field of landscape urbanism and simultaneously link local everyday life to the demands of the global economy. The rapidly urbanizing and economically growing region of Southeast Asia, in general, and Vietnam, in particular, have been singled out as pertinent sites to develop such alternative approaches to development.

Suzan Kelly Shannon studied architecture at the Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and at the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, and finished her doctorate in 2004 at the University in Leuven/Belgium. In 2003, she won the first prize in the competition “Europan 7” in Estonia.

Jury declaration: The research was not only thorough, but also intuitive and committed. The cho-sen approach of landscape urbanism is a promising hybrid methodology that affords intelligent resistance against global urbanisation patterns. The transition from study to concept, and from concept to planning is exemplary, as is the op-portunity taken by entering into dialogue with the Vietnamese government in or-der to bring about real change.

call for entries [pdf/6,8 KB]
rules of procedure [pdf/138,7 KB]

Jury of the first stage

Regina Bittner, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Dr. Regina Bormann, TIKOPIA Büro für Kultur- und Stadtforschung, Beilstein
Prof. Ernst Hubeli, Technische Universität Graz
Dr. Werner Möller, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Alexey Muratov, Project Russia, Moskau
Prof. Scott Paterson, Parsons School of Design, New York
Wilfried Hackenbroich, Berlin

Jury of the second stage

Prof. Dr. Omar Akbar, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Prof. Dr. Helmuth Berking, Institut für Soziologie, Technische Universität Darmstadt
Francesca Ferguson, Generalkommissarin Deutscher Pavillon, 9. Internationale Architektur Biennale Venedig
Prof. Dr. Susanne Hauser, Institut für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften, Technische Universität Graz
Shaheen Merali, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
Roemer van Toorn, Berlage Institut, Rotterdam
Dr. Ramesh Kumar Biswas, Atelier Biswas Vienna/Berlin/Kuala Lumpur