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Europan 9
When you think about sustainable new housing developments, what comes to mind? Ever greater attention paid to orientation, insulation, energy sourcing and water management. But the developers who are really forward-thinking are not only considering people’s homes in a different way, they are helping people to change the patterns of their lives to be sustainable. It is interesting that the most significant carbon savings at the eco-development BedZed in Surrey, for instance, have arisen through introducing a car club.
Sustainable new housing means helping people to live more intelligently and more simply. This means providing more of what they need on their doorstep, whether it is space to work, locally sourced food to buy, or places to meet friends so that a car is not necessary to have a social life. It also means taking identity seriously – naming and nurturing the spirit of the place. There is clearly no better time to throw out the redundant standard products and poor site layouts of the last thirty years. But old habits die hard, and so we need new eyes and fresh thinking.
This is where Europan, the world’s largest housing and urban design competition for young architects, comes in. It offers a rare chance for developers as well as architects in participating cities across Europe to meet their counterparts, and gain a big picture perspective on the issues facing urban development and housing.
The opportunity it offers to young design teams in the UK is particularly unique because, unlike European practice, we tend to only use design competitions for large, landmark projects. Furthermore, unlike many architectural competitions, which are purely conceptual, Europan is ‘live’ In the UK, Europan, now in its ninth round, is run by CABE in partnership with Communities and Local Government, English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation. Deliverability is of paramount importance to the site partners and judges.
Themes and briefs are set by CABE with contributions from the site sponsors, based on the actual development needs of the sites. The competition winners have to solve real and pressing urban problems such as how to create an identity, how to stitch into the existing fabric of our towns and how to revive neighbourhoods - issues that affect not only these sites but many others in towns and cities across the country.
This year’s three Europan sites are in Milton Keynes, Sheffield and Stoke-on-Trent. In Milton Keynes the site is in the Western Expansion Area, which will be the size of a small town providing 6,000 homes by 2011. The site in Sheffield enjoys an excellent location in the south of the city – with views out across the city to the Peak District National Park. In Stoke-on-Trent, the city centre site is a cleared housing market renewal site imminently being released for construction.
In Milton Keynes, one of the big challenges has been how to retain a unique identity as the city grows. The winning scheme by Tom Russell Architects, A Forest in the City, was praised by the judges for its vision of mixed family housing and mews housing. The design cleverly weaves the unique greenness of Milton Keynes into an urban site. Well-defined frontages form a coherent fabric while offering flexibility of use. The scheme has the potential for houses to be split for multi-occupation, or to be developed to create additional work units or annexes.
City Slipway, by RCKa, aims to attract people back from the suburbs and surrounding towns to city-centre living in Stoke-on-Trent – a sustainable proposition given the city’s good existing infrastructure. It combines a central public route down to the Caldon Canal (an infrastructural spine) with a striking iconic apartment building, and terraced housing: re-vitalizing the waters edge and giving it a strong new identity.
The judges will award a winner for the site in Sheffield before the summer. The two projects selected as runners-up will receive feedback from the judges and the client (Sheffield City Council), and then the opportunity to develop their ideas further.
With seventy three real sites in twenty two countries, and with more than 1,750 entries received, Europan 9 gives up-and-coming practices the opportunity to not only literally put something on the map but also access a huge network of Europe-wide urban debate. Entrants are able to select any of the European sites: British competitors might have their designs built in Nacka (Sweden), Espoo (Finland) or Milton Keynes.
The Europan biennial meetings also provide a stage for debate about the future of housing. On the continent there is a well-developed appreciation of city living, with cities like Paris, Berlin and Barcelona all built with hierarchical spatial concepts, to higher density, deriving from a historically rooted concept of urbanism. For UK clients and design teams, the essence of Europan is in this debate: examples abroad provide a valuable counterpoint to a developer-led housing market. British housing needs to draw more on its European neighbours for inspiration.
In terms of commissioning ‘architecture’ as opposed to just ‘buildings’, we can learn from European methods. The Swiss use of the competition framework, for example, is successful for many types of schemes. Competitions with sites ready for development and genuine site sponsor teams are, however, not common in the UK. CABE hopes that Europan will continue to encourage the delivery of more high-quality, innovative projects and the use of design competitions.
With three million new homes to be built by 2020, the need to raise the stakes now for housing quality cannot be overstated. Europan champions design-led housing, with strong contributions from urban designers on many of the proposals, and at least one architect per team. It throws down a gauntlet to challenge the way we commission and build.
Claire Johnson, CABE enabling advisor
