GRAZ
runner up: "my home is my castle"
team leader: Gordan DUBOKOVIC (DE)
The suggested grid structure suggests a system that orchestrates significance by leaving a lot of freedom to private investors.
The system only can work successfully if:
_the city manages to control the public landscape of the project, above all the concept of the landscaped streets: traffic-infrastructure operates as landscape-strips framing the islands of the grid (landscape architecture), thus giving freedom to the generic development of commercial architecture
_in contrast to the generic islands, the significant islands are developed by high-quality architecture
_The concept of how to concentrate density and combine it with significance is convincing, as well the integration of the informal developments in dispersed areas.
_The project labels the commercial player as famous global chain-firms, which seems to be a quite superficial and problematic approach, as it does not reflect on the diversity of commercial production; the extrapolation of the global puts forward one blatant neo-liberal mechanism of the grid neglecting other potentials of different public private partnerships. In this sense the city would have to intelligently explore the grid’s actual potentials and implications in order to find sustainable modes for development.
(Excerpt jury report)