At 7.30 p.m. on Monday, 2 June 2014, the Architecture Institute of Catalonia (COAC) witnessed the opening of the finalists' exhibition for the EUROPAN 2012 Awards. The exhibition can be visited until Saturday, 14 June 2014, and includes the prizewinning projects for both the Spanish and international editions of the awards. This year, the prizewinners and runners-up in both editions included a significant number of alumni and teaching staff from the ESARQ School of Architecture.
The exhibition comprises display panels featuring the work of the teams that won first prize, second prize and the runners-up. Among the successful entrants are ESARQ School of Architecture alumni Andrea Zupan-Dover, Jordi Flores, Gisela Morera, Joan Sanz and Conxa Gené: they are joined by Joan Solà Font, a lecturer at the School; Verónica Sánchez Carrer, a lecturer on the Master’s Degree programme in Sustainable Emergency Architecture; and Tomás García Píriz, who has taught at past editions of the Vertical Workshop.
EUROPAN is a biennial competition of urban-planning initiatives and architectural ideas that aims to enhance knowledge and research in the fields of habitation and urban planning. Architects under the age of 40 are invited to suggest plans for the urban locations provided by the competition organizers throughout Europe.
For this year’s edition, which went by the title of “The Adaptable City / Adapting the City and Architecture to Urban Rhythms”, entrants were invited to ponder the importance of the rhythms and cycles of urban life. In today’s context of an uncertain future, the aim of the competition was to expand the city’s ability to adapt, and – without taking away its specific qualities – to help accelerate, decelerate or articulate cycles and transformations, in order to explore the relationship between time and space in architectural projects of an urban nature.
