Venice Biennale shortlist

By Tina Perinotto

21 December 2009 – Australia’s urban survival strategies in 2050 might include cities whose urban growth boundaries are at the centre, vertical cities that produce energy and food at the top for those below, or cities built from Noosa to Geelong.

At least if the architects, engineers even the Bangarra Dance company have their way, judging by the creative and provocative urban visions shortlisted for Australia’s contribution to the Venice Biennale.

The shortlist, announced on Friday (18 December) was selected from 129 submissions entered in the national Ideas for Australia’s cities 2050+ competition, run by the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale Creative Directors, John Gollings and Ivan Rijavec.

The competition, the two-part “NOW + WHEN Australian Urbanism” aims is to find three of Australia’s most interesting urban regions, as they are “now” and how they might look in 2050 through the eyes of seven “futuristic urban environments” , the creative directors said.

The shortlist includes:

• New cities housing between 50,000-100,000 people in current desert areas to address our expected population growth;
• Cities in which urban development is concentrated in peripheral areas, such as large landholdings on university campuses, ‘big box’ shopping centres, business parks, industrial estates, recreational reserves, and market gardens to establish a series of interlinked, self-sustaining districts dispersed along a transport ring.
• Cities which feature a “tartan-like texture of pure urban areas (or cells), pure rural cells, and cells which are a hybrid of rural and urban”, providing a “vital flexibility for a sustainable future”.
• Cities designed for “urban life without fear”, based on the belief that “any design for a good, sustainable city for the 21st century will demand a theory of hope and the desirable”.
• Cities within cities a city’s growth boundary is not on its periphery but at its heart and a Green City, where the top plane provides wind and solar energy to power (and cool) the multiple cities below, as well as all food production.
• Cities woven into the landscape’ – balancing dense human settlement with flora and fauna biodiversity, with major roadways converted into natural landscape corridors.
• Cities hugging the coast from Noosa to Geelong to accommodate population growth and the preferred coastal climate, with very fast trains to connect them

John Gollings said these ideas now needed to be turned into “tangible 3D models which can be screened as virtual, built projects for exhibition in the Australian Pavilion in Venice.”

He said: “This process will challenge the normal speculative imaging often produced by architects, and lead to new presentation techniques benefiting the whole profession as the world embraces 3D, virtual, and holographic media.

“From the test results with our 3D projectors, now running in Melbourne, the Australian pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale will be a standout attraction.”

Co-director Ivan Rijavec, Principal of innovative architectural practice Rijavec Architects said: “We currently have 93 per cent of Australians living in urban environments being affected every living minute by the way in which our cities function.

“Our management of these centres is fundamental to arresting global warming, and it wouldn’t be too an extravagant a claim to say there’s nothing more important in the contemporary Australian debate.”

( See What’s On for details of the Venice Biennale dates.)

	Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 – shortlist of submissions: WHEN Ideas for Australia’s Cities 2050+ competition
REF#	SUBMISSION TITLE	ORGANISATION	CONTACT	STATE
6	Sydney 2050: Fraying Ground	Terroir	Gerard Reinmuth	NSW
15	Networks Eco-polis	Whitford and Brearley	Steven Whitford	VIC
23	Urban Life Without Fear	Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning, University of Melbourne	Justyna Karakiewicz	VIC
30	A Future Australian City	EDMOND & CORRIGAN	Maggie Edmond	VIC
31	Mould City	Colony Architects	Peter Raisbeck	VIC
33	Sedimentary City	University of Queensland	Brit Andresen	QLD
34	Not All Arrows Hit the Target	NH Architecture	Francesca Black	VIC
49	Multiple Cities	John Wardle Architects	John Wardle	VIC
52	biomimetic city	Arup Sydney	Alanna Howe, Alexander Hespe	NSW
54		fmd architects	Fiona Dunin, Alex Peck, Martina Johnson	VIC
61	Love and Movement	Woodhead & Bangarra Dance	Angelo Di Marco	NSW
70	Rubix Cube	BKK Architects, Village Well, Charter Keck Kramer	George Huon	VIC
86		Hassell, Holopoint, University of Adelaide	Timothy Horton	SA
77	e-agora 2059	Lean Productions	Tom Rivard	NSW
79	Cities of Resilience	Arup Sydney	Diana Griffiths	NSW
84	Speciation City	Curtin Uni + The University of Western Australia	Rene Van Meeuwen	WA
92	Island Proposition 2100	room11 hobart + Katrina Stoll	Scott Lloyd	TAS
93	When 2100	Lacoste + Stevenson Architects, Craig Allchin, FROST design	angela rowson	NSW
95	Implementing the Rhetoric	Harrison and White Pty Ltd	Marcus White	VIC
103	How Does it Make You Feel?	Statkus Architecture + others	Ben Statkus	VIC
104	Loop City	MGS with BILD + DYSKORS and MATERIAL THINKING	Jocelyn Chiew	VIC
117	A Tale of Two Cities 2100	Billard Leece Partnership	Rajith Senanayake	VIC
122	The Mangrove occupying the Now and WHEN of the waters edge	Innovarchi	Stephanie Smith	NSW
126	Cloudnets	Minifie Nixon Architects + RMIT	Paul Minifie	VIC