Close to heaven: expressways in the center of Taipei

© Johanna Wittmaack

Taipei has a population of 2.6 million on an area of some 270 square kilometers; this means a density of almost 10,000 people per square kilometer. It is clear that a city like this needs an intricately branching and effective road network to prevent traffic from coming to a standstill. Those who visit the city for the first time may walk through the streets in amazement and be swallowed up by all the noise and bustle – and nevertheless immediately feel they have understood something of the city’s traffic system.

The highway leading into the city is accompanied by a second road, built approximately ten meters higher. On the main traffic arteries there are even up to four levels, layered one above the other. The sky-scraping expressways are especially impressive: they are fast routes leading through the city, but have only a few exits. If you miss an exit, you have to drive a long extra distance. In the middle there are main roads with somewhat more turn-offs; and at the bottom are the normal main roads, which branch out into a fine capillary system of side roads and tracks.

A sea of noise and tail lights

Moped riders wait in a zone reserved for them until the traffic lights change to green

© Johanna Wittmaack

Even on the normal roads, however, not all traffic is equal. For example, in Taipei buses run on special lanes. But even in the general mayhem of the public traffic lanes there is a hierarchy: moped riders are permitted to drive up to a zone specially reserved for them at traffic lights. To an outsider, who perceives the trend to smaller and smaller cars in European cities, it looks as if an attractive way has been found of inducing people to use the smallest vehicles possible – a moped carrying one or two persons instead of an almost empty car.

However, in truth the background to this is completely different, as Jason Chang, professor at the National Taiwan University and an adviser to the Taipei City Government in questions of transport policy and development, explains: “In the 1970s there was a significantly high number of accidents in Taipei due to the large number of mopeds and the confusing traffic situation. As a research assistant I therefore worked with a research group that was developing means of prevention. The stopping spaces in front of traffic lights were part of this: although the moped riders have priority, they have to wait for a special green light, for example, in order to make a turn off. We presented the scheme in 1985 – but the rule did not come into force until 1995. And then only because the chief of the Taipei traffic police at that time had listened to the lecture and was enthusiastic about the idea even then!”

Up to four road levels are layered, one above the other

© Johanna Wittmaack

Now the streets of Taipei have become unthinkable without this system, which gives visitors an impressive experience: when the light changes from red to green, it seems as if all hell has broken loose. As if in unison, all the engines roar, the moped riders sprint off, and the cars zoom along behind. A sea of noise and tail lights.

Higher, faster, further?

Could it be that the expressways too were originally built for a completely different reason than to divide the traffic as effectively as possible? “The first expressway was built to connect the first Taiwanese freeway to the city,” says Jason Chang. “But they have not been a success. They do not reduce the traffic during peak times. Apart from that they cut through the city and raise high the completely wrong people: those who drive a car instead of using public transport!” For him the future of traffic is therefore close to the ground, in the buses – and the metro system, which is entirely people-centered. In recent years the government has terminated two projects of elevated expressways in the city while putting bus lane and HOV (high occupancy vehicle) facilities on an expressway connecting city center and residential area.

If you are out and about in Taipei, you hardly notice them, in fact, because drivers do indeed use the lowest, multi-lane road most of the time, even though this involves hold-ups. It is unusual to get a “green wave”, i.e. the chance to drive through several traffic lights one after the other on green. Even outside the rush hour, cars stand in lines in front of and behind you, while mopeds snake their way through the stationary traffic. You benefit from the expressways only on trips to neighboring cities. In view of this, events like New Year’s Eve 2013, when the Taipei metro carried 2.06 million passengers in a single night, make it clear that expressways cannot be the solution for inner-city mobility.

Vision by Höweler+Yoon Architecture, "Shareway On The Platform"

© Höweler+Yoon Architecture

In Berlin and New York, too, traffic moves on elevated routes – however, they have never been used by cars, but by rail traffic. This is precisely the principle to which the architects Höweler + Yoon had recourse when they developed their proposals for the Audi Urban Future Award 2012. Their visuals show, for example, suspended rail vehicles that move through the city and make their mark on its appearance. However, the architects did not merely to take up existing concepts – they aim to make them fit for future needs, as workshops in the course of this year demonstrate.

In contrast to the expressways, their routes high above people’s heads are not made for individual traffic: they link the transport of goods and passengers. Trains will depart from a hub in Newark, according to their vision. Along the way individual modules can split off and use a many-branched network, until finally each part of the train reaches its destination. However, people and goods share the route for as long as possible. This reduces the environmental impact – and the noise of thousands of engines is abolished. If the system is sufficiently differentiated, roads as we know them could become obsolete; Höweler + Yoon have for example proposed a surface that could be changed as required from a road to a lawn.

"Shareway" concept by Höweler + Yoon Architecture

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

In Taipei, by the way, this has already happened – though once and for all. The metro stations have been designed to be as inviting as possible, and some of them have been greened. In contrast to the expressways they do not separate residents on the two sides of the street. They bring them together.

The City Dossier Boston

THE AUDI URBAN FUTURE INITIATIVE

For the first time representatives of the city planning authorities of New York, Boston and Newark met with university professors to discuss future-oriented mobility concepts in the economically most powerful region of the USA, together with the architects Höweler + Yoon and experts from Audi. This was a unique, openly conducted discourse between the car manufacturer, architects and persons responsible for city planning, who provided their feedback on the project and thus made a productive contribution to approaches towards solving problems of future mobility. On one point the participants were unanimous: this task can be mastered only by an alliance of decision-makers, innovators, creative persons and suppliers of technology.

City Dossier Boston workshop in New York

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Luca de Meo, Board Member of AUDI AG for Sales and Marketing, expressed his excitement at this visionary cooperation with the architects Höweler + Yoon. He stated that Audi is endeavoring to play a part in shaping the urban future, for which intense research and answers to urgent questions about city life are needed: “We want to understand and we want to listen. How can we improve the quality of life in cities? And what does premium mobility mean in the urban spaces?” asked de Meo.

Urban Intelligent Assist

Audi itself provides the first answers to this question: piloted driving, piloted parking and the traffic light assistant are three technologies that will enhance the experience of driving in cities in the future. Here the automobile responds to its surroundings actively. For example it uses the “green wave,” i.e. a sequence of green traffic lights, in order to get from A to B, it looks for a parking space autonomously or even takes over control itself in a traffic hold-up so that the driver can work on his or her e-mails. A so-called Audi Urban Intelligent Assist could increase safety, reduce the stress factor and raise efficiency.

In order to create an intelligent, networked automobile that can react to its environment, it has to be provided with data from its surroundings. Here the city could act as a supplier of data, for example, explained André Hainzlmaier, from Innovation Strategy at the Audi Electronics Venture. Urban data and personalized information could be made available from a cloud at all times. The aim is seamless navigation.

What can you do for the city?

City Dossier Boston workshop in New York, Alexandros Washburn, Chief Urban Designer, New York City Department of City Planning Central Office

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Alexandros Washburn, Chief Urban Designer at the Department of City Planning Central Office in New York City, reverses accustomed roles by calling for more commitment on the part of citizens: “Don’t ask what the city can do for you, but what can you do for the city? And how can the city benefit from mobility?”

For Meejin Yoon from Höweler + Yoon Architecture, automobiles are like traveling sensors that collect data. The city can use these data in order to react better to individual traffic. Yoon is also excited by individual sharing models that go beyond the car: “You can develop different kinds of fantastic vehicles such as e-motorbikes and pedelecs, and I am sure that people in Boston and New York will love them.” Users pay a fee for these means of transport for a period of time, and when they have had enough, simply put them back into a pool from which other users benefit too. It would be a kind of premium sharing.

A platform for premium mobility

City Dossier Boston workshop in New York, Jonathan D. Solomon, Associate Dean School of Architecture at Syracuse University

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Jonathan D. Solomon, Associate Dean School of Architecture at Syracuse University, goes one step further in making this appeal: “Don’t look so much at the product but more at the platform.” For him the decisive question is: “Who can create a mobility platform that is so good that no-one wants to leave it?” A manufacturer of premium cars, he said, must create an ecosystem in which hardware, software and services form a closed system. This system would have to function so well that people would be willing to move entirely within it and would reject other systems. According to this view a car maker should not only manufacture cars but also create a complete mobility chain including cars, trains, aircraft and much more, in order to enable ideal switching within the chain.

Switching and sharing

Defining Share

© Höweler + Yoon Architecture

Höweler + Yoon Architecture’s research results have led them to a practically based solution for the economic region between Boston and Washington DC: “Switching and sharing have emerged as key strategies for urban mobility in the Boswash region. Switching will become increasingly important as no single mobility system will be able to meet all of our needs, and we will increasingly need to switch from various modes: private car to shared bike, to shared car and public transit subway system. Sharing is already a prevalent means of using resources, including music, information, bikes and cars. Mobility will increasingly be shared between multiple users and communities of users,” as the architects explain.

Defining Last Mile

© Höweler + Yoon Architecture

The aim is to overcome the so-called last mile. In the meantime, however, the first mile and the mid-mile have also been identified as gaps. This refers to the weak points in connections between individual means of transport along a route. The first mile is from home to the car. The mid-mile is, for example, from the car to the train or from the train to the car. And the last mile, finally, which has to be covered on foot, is between leaving the car and reaching the destination. The next step now involves finding diverse solutions in order to close these gaps in the mobility chain.

The workshop showed that Boswash possesses enormous creative potential which can be activated in order to find solutions for the mobility of the future. It also became clear, however, that one factor for success will be decisive: working in association. Only through an association of private and public institutions and of creative persons and innovators can solutions emerge that will work for all participants in traffic. And ultimately, individual initiative is also called for, in accordance with the motto: “What can you do for the city?”

The City Dossier Boston - German version - Deutsche Fassung

THE AUDI URBAN FUTURE INITIATIVE

Höweler+Yoon Architecture is a multidisciplinary practice operating in the space between architecture, art, and landscape, Höweler+Yoon Architecture (HYA) believes in an embodied experience of architecture. While its work lies at the intersection of the conceptual and the corporeal, the firm is committed to both the practice of and prospects for architecture. Engaged in projects of all scales, HYA is interested in the material realities and material effects of its work, testing interactions between their constructs and the larger public.

Projects and Awards

The firm’s projects include architecture, planning, interiors, installations, furniture, concept clothing, and artist books. HYA’s work is the subject of Expanded Practice, Höweler+Yoon Architecture / MY Studio (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009). The firm’s book, Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig (MAP Book Publishers, 2009), is a research project on Boston’s Big Dig, the largest urban infrastructure project in U.S. history. HYA is a 2007 recipient of the Architecture League of New York’s Emerging Voices Award, and the partners were recognized in Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard the same year. The firm’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles Museum of ontemporary Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan. Their projects have been published in Architect, Architectural Record, Domus, I.D. Magazine, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the inancial Times.

Boston—Washington Metropolitan Area

© Google Maps

Hengdu Skycourts | Chengdu, China, ongoing project

© Höweler + Yoon Architecture

Eco Pods | Boston, USA, 2010

© Höweler + Yoon Architecture | Squared Design Lab

Public works: unsolicited small projects for the big dig, Boston, USA, 2008-2009.

© Höweler + Yoon Architecture

Architects

Eric Höweler, born in Cali, Colombia, is a registered architect and an assistant professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He received a B.Arch. and an M.Arch. from Cornell University. Prior to forming HYA, he was a senior designer at Diller+Scofidio and an associate principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. He is coauthor of Expanded Practice, Höweler+Yoon Architecture / MY Studio and author of Skyscraper: Vertical Now (Rizzoli/Universe Publishers, 2003).

J. Meejin Yoon is an architect, designer, and an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born in Seoul, Korea, she received a B.Arch. from Cornell University and an M.Arch. in urban design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She is the recipient of the United States Artist Award in Architecture/Design, the Athena RISD/Target Emerging Designer Award, the Rome Prize in Design, the Young Architects Award from the Architectural League of New York, and a Fulbright Scholar. She is coauthor of Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig (MAP Book Publishers 2009) and Expanded Practice, Höweler+Yoon Architecture / MY Studio and author/designer of Absence (Printed Matter and Whitney Museum of American Art, 2003).

Local curator: Ana Miljacki

Metropolitan Region: Boston—Washington D.C., USA

Boswash, the megalopolis spanning from Boston to Washington D.C., which is home to fiftythree million people and one-third of the country's gross domestic product, has passed from exception to norm. Yet, Boswash was imaginable only retroactively: a continentally scaled afterthought built in strands of interstates, self-similar subdivisions, and networks of infrastructure.

This megacity region—defined by sprawling networks of suburbs, exurbs, and high-density urban corridors—boomed from six to fifty million inhabitants decades before its existence was collectively registered. Connected, divided, and inscribed with the infrastructures of mobility, communication, and economics, this territory of leftovers strung along the interstate highway I-95, was discovered by geographers and urban theorists in the accumulated accidents of each individual city’s modernization.

Constructed from outdated dreams and now- defunct infrastructures, Boswash is the residue left behind when traditional notions of the city no longer hold sway. Thus, its 'inhabitants’ individual cognitive maps might still align with much older spatial boundaries, defining the edges of Boswash’s various urban enclaves, voting districts, and state boundaries. In lived experience, however, these relatively clear spatial edges give way to dense matrices of unseen geographies, locales described less through politically negotiated borders and more through theedges of economic zones, climatological regions, communication infrastructures, and territories of mobility and transportation. As infrastructure across the country has been failing, the housing developments it spawned have been foreclosed and the continent appears to have been structured in models of mobility we can no longer afford in financial, environmental, and social terms; the notions of progress that supported the continual sprawling American expansion no longer ring true.

The postwar incarnation of the American Dream might be equally outdated. Its promise of the single-family home, with a front lawn and two-car garage, coupled with automobility, precipitated the postwar American suburb and its corresponding cultures (pool parties, Tupperware, and barbecues), architectural manifestations (ranchburgers, drive-throughs, and big-box stores), and neuroses (housewife blues, road rage, eating disorders).

Boswash’s contemporary infrastructural coincidences and unsuspecting publics might have already begun to transform the products and manifestations (both cultural and spatial) of that American Dream. Within the infrastructural leftovers of this now outdated dream lies the possibility of conceiving of Boswash not as the inevitable outcome of perfect engineering but as a highly orchestrated and deliberately produced platform from which we might imagine alternate paths, different trajectories, or new cultural dreams. To imagine an alternate life for the road and its itinerant urban effects is also to imagine its alternate augmentation in the form of new American Dreams.

New iterations of occupational invention could be staged as strategies for augmenting infrastructures that engage local stakeholders in generating new possibilities for the future of personal mobility.To treat the I-95 corridor as a platform for divergent forms of invention is ultimately to project the existence of Boswash not from the apparent monotony of the drive, but through the leveraging of I-95 as a platform for issensus, or moments of difference accumulating around the distributed effects of infrastructural fallout. Where the drive today is numbed with the unrelenting expanse of undifferentiated urban material, the corridor might be reimagined as a platform for staging other infrastructural narratives and moments of political, social, and spatial difference, and with them, new possible incarnations of the American Dream.

Superpool, Istanbul

What is your reason for participating in the Audi Urban Future Award 2012?
As global corporations rediscover their responsibility toward the world within which they operate, they naturally look for young creative partnerships to enhance their think tanks. As a young architecture firm, we believe many outlets/avenues are needed to investigate our complex urban environments, and we are happy to be participating in Audi's initiative.

How do you start a new project? Please explain your work process.
In any project we take into the office, we question the conventions within which it is inscribed. By researching the topic (a chair, a building topology a fabrication process) we try to gain an understanding of the parameters that "shape" or give "reasons" to why an object or process is designed as it is. A series of proposals, or scenarios, are then developed that seeks to "attack" or solve the problem in a range of different ways. By using this method, an internal understanding of the "problem" and its potential solutions are developed. Through discussion with the client selections are made, and iterations of viable solutions are processed in order to reach a result that both the client and the studio support.

When you think of mobility, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
Accessibility. This came up in our recent conversations with Haluk Gerçek, a professor of transportation at Istanbul Technical University. Maybe the question is, How can people easily access quality services, schools, jobs, communities, and ideas?

How will you travel from point A to point B in the greater Istanbul area by 2050?
A mixture of many modes—tram, metro, busses, taxies, boats, shared cabs, and minibuses—that is probably not so different from today. A lot of the transport will happen in some mode of medium-sized, shared vehicles. The main difference will most likely be that travel will be driverless, and routes will be customized by a software that plans the most efficient shared routes among people requesting to be picked up at certain locations.

In May 2012, the workshop participants of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012 met up with Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, to present their initial ideas and proposals during the "Metropolis and Mobility Dialogue" conference at Audi Forum Ingolstadt. This is the statement from NODE's Doreen Heng Liu.

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

NODE Architecture & Urbanism, Pearl River Delta

What is your reason for participating in the Audi Urban Future Award 2012?
I think it is an important discussion at the moment of architecture, especially after thirty years of rapid urban transformation in China. As an architect having practiced in the Pearl River Delta and completed quite a number of buildings in the region, as well as an observer, having seen a tremendous amount of building objects emerging every year, I came to ask what my role is as an architect in the making process of these cities, new and old. The process comes at a high price, utilizing irreversible resources like land and energy. Has what we have done brought anything good to the people and the city? For this very reason, engaging the discussion about the urban future—and its making—is an urgent act for us.

How do you start a new project? Please explain your work process.
First, we come up with a set of questions and issues relevant to the project; next, we do research to develop a thorough understanding of these issues and questions; then, we strategize and design scenarios as analysis and consensus of research development; last, we design.

When you think of mobility, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
To connect. To exchange.

How will you travel from point A to point B in your metropolitan area in 2050?
This is a difficult question. The answer mainly relies on the desire of the human being and its available technology. I think that a diversity of choices for travel are necessary—such as seamless connection via public/private transportation or cyber-net, depending on the mood and desire of the traveler—and the speed of connection we want from moment to moment. The future is all about diversity of needs and diversity of possibilities to meet those needs within a desired period of time.

In May 2012, the workshop participants of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012 met up with Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, to present their initial ideas and proposals during the "Metropolis and Mobility Dialogue" conference at Audi Forum Ingolstadt. This is the statement from CRIT's Prasad Khanolkar.

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

CRIT, Mumbai

What is your reason for participating in the Audi Urban Future Award 2012?
The link between urban research and urban interventions, specifically how different forms of maps and projections can help rethink interventions within today’s urban realm, is one of the primary interests of CRIT. We see the Audi Urban Future Award as being consistent with this interest. It provides us an opportunity to develop our ideas on contemporary cities, as well as test them in an international forum, which brings together a range of different urban experiences. We also believe that the industry forces academic interest in the non-Western world, and we want to support such initiatives.



How do you start with a new project? Please explain your work process.
As a collective with varied interests, discussions among the members form the key to our projects. Methods and conceptual strategies are developed as initial preparation. Subsequently, we undertake intensive fieldwork. Our interest is usually toward reading the nonobvious, the nuanced, and the oblique aspects of urban conditions that are otherwise missed in conventional methods. These become the basis for our understanding and intervention.

How will you travel from point A to point B in the greater Mumbai area by 2050?
Forty- to fifty-year scenarios are difficult to predict or project. However, based on current understandings and conditions, we can think of many possibilities for 2050, including: First, the increase in congestion and pollution forces city actors to move into small, economic, and ecological modes—small, fuel-efficient cars, mass transport, etc. Second, the increase in congestion and pollution forces citizens to move out of the cities, and this, combined with technological advancements, would reconfigure urban/rural land use in a manner such that travel to work is not required; where distinction between urban and rural is no longer relevant, where centralization is abandoned and life is lived in small, decentralized, self-sufficient capsules. Then, we would only travel for leisure, and this would be done using either adventure- or luxury-driven modes of transport.

In May 2012, the workshop participants of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012 met up with Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, to present their initial ideas and proposals during the "Metropolis and Mobility Dialogue" conference at Audi Forum Ingolstadt. This is the statement from Höweler + Yoon Architecture (Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon).

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Boswash

What is your reason for participating in the Audi Urban Future Award 2012?
We are extremely excited to be able to imagine the relationship between the future of the city and the technologies that will shape it and be shaped by it. As architects, we're deeply concerned with how architecture will evolve over time, what types of values it will possess and what kind of public space it will help to create. But, at the same time, we recognize that architecture is a just part of this equation. Throughout history, technology has had a far more significant role than architecture in reshaping the way we live, so to have the opportunity to think about these two fields in parallel to one another is a really incredible opportunity.

How do you start a new project? Please explain your work process?
As a firm, we're very interested in the ways in which design can engage other disciplines. As a result, we like to begin each of our projects by imagining how other fields of expertise have tackled similar issues. In this case, that field happens to be automotive design or infrastructural engineering, but it could be anything from fashion design to software programming or artistic practices.

When you think of mobility, what's the first thing that comes to mind?
In the United States, the dominant form of mobility is the automobile; the car has become an integral part of our identity as a nation. People's cars reflect and advertise their values and help them identify with others.

How will you travel from point A to point B in your metropolitan area by 2050?
In the United States, we see a landscape entirely dominated by the automobile; the car has configured patterns of urbanization, conditioned dependencies on energy resources, and become an integral part of the country’s identity. While we certainly have no problem with the automobile, we do think it is a problem that the automobile is, for the majority of Americans, the only choice for mobility. We'd like to see a future in which there is both a greater degree of choice in terms of how we get around and a smarter use of the various technologies we have at our disposal. The automobile is a great option for getting around quickly, but it may not be the best choice for other types of travel. So if it were up to us, we'd like to see smarter and more diverse ecologies of mobility.

In May 2012, the workshop participants of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012 met up with Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, to present their initial ideas and proposals during the "Metropolis and Mobility Dialogue" conference at Audi Forum Ingolstadt. This is the statement from Urban-Think Tank (Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner).

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Urban-Think Tank, São Paulo

What is your reason for participating in the Audi Urban Future Award 2012?
We see the Audi Urban Future Award as a platform to investigate the possibilities of the city of São Paulo. We see a specific potential in enriching both mass transportation and fulfilling the desire for door-to-door mobility. We aim to transform the notion of movement by tapping into the complexity and heterogeneity of urban life, thus developing a truly urban condition. The format of the award allows us to rethink scales and modes of mobility and challenge conventional notions of movement, orientation, navigation, and velocity. It also allows us to test our thinking amongst a group of dynamic players in the field of critical urbanism.

How do you start a new project? Please explain your work process.
We start by critically examining the program, mapping the site, and expanding the temporal scope of the current conditions. This allows us to reassess prescribed parameters and normative modes of operation, which are generally based on modernist functional separation. With this approach, we are able to develop original multifunctional strategies and new typologies shaped by site-specific complexities.

When you think of mobility, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
Mobility is an intrinsic human desire reflected in the first steps of a child. This desire for displacement is a natural state of being. The term is also loaded with conflicting agendas defined by personal and collective modes of transport. Specific attributes of mobility that shape our ideas include: the surface, navigation, collective mobility, scales and functions of mobility, potentials of congestion, potentials of the city, and the contradictions of contemporary urban mobility. Often the need for mobility is created by incapacity of urban populations to organize alternative forms of living. Consequently, commuting becomes a lifestyle that consumes much of our time.

How will you travel from point A to point B in the São Paulo metropolitan area by 2050?
Mobility must become multifaceted and capable of embracing the "culture of congestion" and rapid changing environments and scenarios. Future travel will breed new urban conditions emerging from enhanced transitions between scales of mobility, which are currently in a state of tension. Future mobility infrastructures will play a key role in shaping heterogeneous modes of living and shared sociabilities.

From left: Peter Schwarzenbauer (Member of the Board of Management for Marketing and Sales at AUDI AG), Christian Gärtner (curator of the Audi Urban Future Initiative and Member of the Management Board of Stylepark AG), Junya Ishigami + Associates (Tokyo), CRIT (Mumbai), Urban -Think Tank (São Paulo), Node Architecture & Urbanism (Pearl River Delta), Superpool (Istanbul), Höweler + Yoon Architecture (Boston/Washington), Heinrich Wefing (moderator and editor of the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”), Rupert Stadler (Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG)

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Experience-Day in Ingolstadt

On Wednesday, May 14th 2012, two days before the conference, the six architects from six metropol regions taking part met up at the „Experience Day“ at Audi in Ingolstadt, where the carmaker told them all about its future strategies and gave them an idea of the various different departments within the technical development – from E-sound-design to piloted parking. Here a few impressions.

 

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Rupali Gupte (CRIT) is listening to the guided tour inside the plant.

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Experience Day: The architects visit AUDI AG in Ingolstadt. Here they are standing in the accoustic hall. 

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Workshop in Ingolstadt

The discussion on future scenarios of urban mobility continued on Tuesday, May 15th 2012, at Audi in Building T36 in Ingolstadt, with all the participants presenting initial ideas and approaches. Chaired by Dr. Heinrich Wefing, editor of the political section at the Hamburg-based weekly newspaper Die Zeit, there was then a discussion with the Audi representatives of all the suggestions concerned future mobility in the metropol regions of Mumbai/India, Tokyo/Japan, Boston-Washington/USA, Pearl River Delta/China, São Paulo/Brazil and Istanbul/Turkey.

The architects are in a discussion with the Audi Experts.

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Prasad Shetty and Rupali Gupte (f. l., CRIT) are architects from Mumbai.

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

“Metropolis & Mobility Dialogue” Conference in Ingolstadt

On Wednesday, May 16th 2012, all the workshop participants met up with Rupert Stadler, the Audi CEO, at museum mobile to present their initial ideas and proposals to a large group of journalists from all over the world at museum mobile, Audi Forum Ingolstadt at the conference „Metropolis and Mobility Dialogue“. After the presentation of the outlines of the ideas, a lively discussion of the individual concepts then developed – with media representatives and members of the individual Audi divisions all contributing. The discussion could be followed by live stream, and viewers could enrich it by making their own contributions to the dialogue: an exchange of views in which every thought on the subject of the city and mobility could become a decisive step forward.

From left: Peter Schwarzenbauer (Member of the Board of Management for Marketing and Sales at AUDI AG), Christian Gärtner (curator of the Audi Urban Future Initiative and Member of the Management Board of Stylepark AG), Junya Ishigami + Associates (Tokyo), CRIT (Mumbai), Urban -Think Tank (São Paulo), Node Architecture & Urbanism (Pearl River Delta), Superpool (Istanbul), Höweler + Yoon Architecture (Boston/Washington), Heinrich Wefing (moderator and editor of the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”), Rupert Stadler (Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG)

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Christian Gärtner is the curator of the Audi Urban Future Initiative and Member of the Management Board of Stylepark AG. Rupert Stadler is Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG.

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Selva Gürdoğan (Superpool) is presenting her ideas about the future city.

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Learn more about the Award 2012 ».

Höweler+Yoon Architecture: Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, colloquially referred to as the "Big Dig", submerged the much-hated "Green Monster", an elevated freeway which divided the city from its waterfront. The multi-billion-dollar infrastructural investment would transform highway into park (Green Monster to Greenway) transforming Boston’s dense core.

© Höweler+Yoon Architecture

Höweler+Yoon Architecture is a multidisciplinary practice operating in the space between architecture, art, and landscape, Höweler+Yoon Architecture (HYA) believes in an embodied experience of architecture. While its work lies at the
intersection of the conceptual and the corporeal, the firm is committed to both the practice of and prospects for architecture. Engaged in projects of all scales, HYA is interested in the material realities and material effects of its work, testing
interactions between their constructs and the larger public.

Projects and Awards

Eco Pods | Boston, USA, 2010

© Höweler + Yoon Architecture | Squared Design Lab

The firm’s projects include architecture, planning, interiors, installations, furniture, concept clothing, and artist books. HYA’s work is the subject of Expanded Practice, Höweler+Yoon Architecture / MY Studio (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009). The
firm’s book, Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig (MAP Book Publishers, 2009), is a research project on Boston’s Big Dig, the largest urban infrastructure project in U.S. history. HYA is a 2007 recipient of the Architecture League of New York’s Emerging Voices Award, and the partners were recognized
in Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard the same year. The firm’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles Museum of ontemporary Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan. Their projects have been published in Architect, Architectural Record, Domus, I.D. Magazine, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the inancial Times.

Architects

Eric Höweler, born in Cali, Colombia, is a registered architect and an assistant professor at Harvard University Graduate School of
Design. He received a B.Arch. and an M.Arch. from Cornell University. Prior to forming HYA, he was a senior designer at Diller+Scofidio and an associate principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox
Associates. He is coauthor of Expanded Practice, Höweler+Yoon Architecture / MY Studio and author of Skyscraper: Vertical Now (Rizzoli/Universe Publishers, 2003).

Hengdu Skycourts | Chengdu, China, ongoing project

© Höweler + Yoon Architecture

J. Meejin Yoon is an architect, designer, and an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born in Seoul, Korea, she received a B.Arch. from Cornell University and an M.Arch. in urban design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She is the recipient of the United States Artist Award in Architecture/Design, the Athena RISD/Target Emerging Designer Award, the Rome Prize in Design, the Young Architects Award from the Architectural League of New York, and a Fulbright Scholar. She is coauthor of Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig (MAP Book Publishers 2009) and Expanded Practice, Höweler+Yoon Architecture / MY Studio and author/designer of Absence (Printed Matter and Whitney Museum of
American Art, 2003).

Local curator: Ana Miljacki

In May 2012, the workshop participants of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012 met up with Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, to present their initial ideas and proposals during the "Metropolis and Mobility Dialogue" conference at Audi Forum Ingolstadt. This is the statement from Höweler + Yoon Architecture (Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon).

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

The Audi Urban Future Award 2012 | Five regions, five architects, five ideas - five videos_Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Boswash

© Audi Urban Future Initiative