Europan 9 Ireland

Europan is a biennial competition for young architects and urban design professionals, under 40 years of age, to design nnovative housing schemes for sites across Europe. As Europe’s largest housing competition, it is the best-known opportunity for an architectural first break in the continent.

Europan has a very high profile within the architectural profession across Europe, and aims not to be merely an ‘ideas’ competition, but to match young talent and ideas with real housing site developers and sponsors – injecting new thinking into the European housing debate, which can go on to be developed into built projects.

The competition encourages multi-disciplinary design teams to address social and economic changes occurring in towns and cities, and offers the opportunity for cross-cultural learning and networking for the teams and site promoters involved. As well as bringing to the fore the ideas of some of Europe’s best young architecture and urban design talent, the competition also helps cities and developers to find innovative architectural and urban solutions for the transformation of their sites.

Europan runs across 22 countries, from Portugal to Latvia, and attracts around 2000 submissions across 80 sites per year. Entrants are free to enter any of the sites across Europe. The fresh perspective provided by a southern Italian in northern Finland, for example, can make for an enlightening discourse. Europan forges interesting intellectual alliances, especially since the expansion of the competition to the eastern European countries.

The theme for Europan 9 is sustainable cities and new public spaces. In Ireland, competitors can respond to this theme in the context of very different sites with spatial and social challenges. Two sites have been selected:

* Old Whitechurch Road (Kilnap / Blackpool), Cork
* Lorcan O’Toole Park / Stanaway Park, Kimmage, Dublin

Judges will be looking for proposals which are resource efficient and will adapt to climate change; are flexible enough to allow design progression with partners; have thoughtfully designed public space; and make a positive contribution to local communities.

http://www.europan.ie/