Members of the jury led by Saskia Sassen were Wolfgang Egger, Christian Gärtner, Andres Lepik, Ma Jun, Rahul Mehrotra, Fernando de Mello Franco, Stefan Sielaff and Rupert Stadler. Dr. Werner Widuckel joined as special guest

The first Audi Urban Future Award has been conferred: an international jury of renowned experts selected J. MAYER H. as the winner of the competition initiated by Audi. Rupert Stadler, CEO of AUDI AG, presented the award endowed with 100,000 Euro, the most highly remunerated German architectural prize. During the course of one month, the public can take in the visions of the five international architectural firms that participated in the competition in an impressive exhibition.

“The architects have developed fascinating concepts, models and designs along the theme of urban planning for the future,” said Rupert Stadler at the presentation of the Audi Urban Future Award in Venice. The diversity that characterizes the visions shows how differently life in the megacities of the future could be structured. Big cities will become mobile entities with progressively less distinct boundaries. “That is of great relevance not only to urban planners but, in the context of the future of individual mobility, also to an internationally active automobile manufacturer such as Audi.”

The prize ceremony and opening of the exhibition for the Audi Urban Future Award 2010 took place on the evening of August 25 at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice. An international and interdisciplinary jury selected J. MAYER H. as winner of the award endowed with 100,000 Euro, the most highly remunerated German architectural prize. “Jurgen Mayer H. and his firm have made a radical break with our habitual view of cities and developed points of departure for a completely new urban aesthetics. By crossing and overlapping the real with the virtual, our perception of urban spaces is not only guided towards previously unimagined new forms, but the city itself is also fundamentally transformed”, says Christian Gartner, member of the Stylepark AG Management Board and Curator of the exhibition. Around 200 guests were able to admire the results of the five participating architectural firms in a historical setting. Visitors to the exhibition are carried off into the various urban future scenarios thanks to the exceptional exhibition architecture designed by Raumlaborberlin along with numerous pictures, films and models.

The exhibition and award ceremony represent the high point of the Audi Urban Future Award 2010, throughout the course of which Audi and the architects have worked together very closely. Both during a meeting of the architects in Ingolstadt as well as in visits by the Audi Think Tank to the offices of the architects, participants engaged in stimulating discussions on future themes such as electrification, networks and a new definition of space – and how these factors might influence the city of the future.

At a conference at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, participants presented their initial concepts of the city and mobility in the year 2030. Based upon the dialogue and the debates that took shape during these presentations, the informed audience at the conference acknowledged the great entrepreneurial courage of AUDI AG as the initiator of the competition.

“With the Audi Urban Future Award, we are the first automotive company to address the theme of the future with such complexity”, emphasizes Stadler in Venice. “On the one hand, we are fulfilling our social responsibility for a sustainable future with this award, yet at the same time, the newly gained perspectives are also being put to use internally: the knowledge gained in the course of the competition can be actively applied towards building up expertise – not just of a technological nature, but above all social and aesthetic expertise.” As the experiences of this year’s award and its effect both in public and within the company have shown, the competence of the architects can be optimally combined with internal company knowledge. “Our technical expertise is thus being enriched by cultural know-how, which will be of benefit to us in all divisions at Audi”, says Stadler. For this reason, the company plans to consistently expand upon an interdisciplinary Knowledge Management base in the future.

J. MAYER H.

Mayer’s project focuses on digital technology, but with a difference: The starting point is an existing urban environment. This leads to interesting, unexpected results. Technology here does not determine outcomes, but becomes an instrument for opening up urban space to multiple interventions, meanings, possibilities. One of these effects is to make room in our dense cities, room for diverse uses. This way of conceiving of technology urbanizes humanizing our cities.