The Schindler Global Award 2017

Description

Introduction

The Schindler Global Award (SGA) is a student urban design competition with a focus on mobility. The SGA is an ideas competition, intended to engage students in formulating a response to complex conditions in cities across the globe. The SGA is open to architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning students, in their final Bachelor degree year and Masters degree students. Students can participate individually or in teams, and each entry must have a faculty supervisor.

The 2017 competition site is in São Paulo, the main economic engine of Brazil and most populous city in South America. With a population of twelve million1 and more than twenty million people in the metropolitan region,2 the city is well established and embedded in global flows of resources, people and power. The city faces challenges at all scales, and the competition asks students to address them using urban design frameworks and strategies. The competition site is centered on the CEAGESP (Companhia de Entrepostos e Armazéns Gerais de São Paulo) wholesale market, along with its surrounding neighborhood and infrastructures. The CEAGESP will be relocated by the city in the coming years, freeing up a substantial part of the city for redevelopment and change. Its location in the center of São Paulo offers the potential for forward-thinking approaches to the creation of a new centrality within the city, connected and integrated into the local and regional context.

The commission for competition and study assignments of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA) examined the competition program. It is compliant to the SIA 142 rules for architecture and engineer competitions (2009 edition) under the constraints of a student competition, which explicitly also includes the total prize-money sum.

Task

The task of the 2017 Schindler Global Award is to make a comprehensive urban design proposal to address the existing and future challenges on the CEAGESP wholesale market site. The locally focused urban design strategy should be embedded into its context, strengthening the city and the region as a whole. The central themes of the competition are connection and integration, using public space, mobility infrastructures, housing and workplaces as catalysts. Participants are asked to design a sustainable portion of the city by taking a comprehensive look at these topics.

The competition site, situated west of the old center of São Paulo, is located in close proximity to one of the functional gateways to the city, a strategic position, through which hundreds of thousands of commuters from outlying urban areas pass daily, on their way to and from work. The site is northwest of the current centralities of mostly high-paying jobs. This offers the potential to divert development in the city away from a southward direction by presenting an alternative in the northwest. The CEAGESP area could become a new centrality in a network of other new and existing centralities. Changes to the mix of uses on the site could offer new economic and housing opportunities.

The CEAGESP area has been functioning for many decades as a wholesale market for perishable goods. It is an important local employer. Within a radius of approximately one kilometer are numerous commercial businesses, specialist retailers, and service companies that are directly associated with the CEAGESP, such as plant nurseries, garden furniture retailers, and event agencies. The city government of São Paulo wants to relocate the commercial activity in the near future, moving it from the 640,000 square meter site to the periphery near the Rodoanel Mário Covas beltway.  The primary reason for relocation is the high level of traffic associated with the CEAGESP, which significantly contributes to congestion in city.

Consequently, for the purpose of the competition, the vision for the existing industrial and commercial area is to develop a lively district with a dense mixture of living, working and services, uniting urban and economic considerations. Locally based economies contribute to the diversity, stability and identity of neighborhoods. The mix of uses is therefore of great importance, as are questions of mobility to define where and how residents and workers from the designed neighborhood commute and access their needs in greater São Paulo. This can substantially impact quality of life, and includes everything from employment and living to leisure. For example, well-designed neighborhoods with varied uses and good mobility connections could significantly improve commutes for a portion of the population, by reducing transit distances and the time people need to reach essential destinations in their daily lives.

Topics

The choice of a focus for the design is essential, but the comprehensive nature of the competition means that a multifaceted response is required. Four essential topics are meant to guide proposals, and serve as the benchmarks for the evaluation of entries. Students are free to define additional considerations, but the following topics should be used to ensure holistic designs:

1. Regional and local urban design impact
2. Mobility and public space integration
3. Urban living, urban economy and creation of jobs
4. Cultural, social and architectural heritage

Designs should be grounded and linked to research and analysis. This allows a spectrum of pragmatism and imagination, generated from realistic starting points.