Europan is a biennial competition for young architects and architecture students, under 40 years of age, to design innovative housing schemes for sites across Europe. The competition encourages architects to address social and economic changes occurring in towns and cities and offers the opportunity for cross-cultural learning and networking for the architects and site promoters involved.

Europan 8 is the most recent session of the competition and ran from March 2005 - February 2006. The competition was participated in by 19 countries, submitting 74 sites across Europe and receiving 1,618 entries in total. CABE, together with its partner organisations, is now working closely with the site sponsors to ensure that the winning schemes are implemented in the UK. CABE also aims to ensure that the lessons learnt from the process are disseminated to a wider audience.

For further information on the Europan competition throughout the rest of Europe, please visit the central Europan website at www.europan-europe.com

Catalogue of Europan 8 results

To mark the eighth round of the competitions, EUROPAN is publishing a catalogue of the projects nominated in the 74 European cities of 19 different countries.

The general theme "European urbanity and strategic projects" must be considered as a common way of experiencing the city and its functions but also as a will to deal with the heterogeneity of its forms. The strategic question would not be that of knowing what type of European city we wish to perpetuate but what European city we want for the future.

This clearly reflects the will to create public spaces around what is, without doubt, the specificity of European cities, to favour encounters among people in places they share.

The catalogue describes the 143 prize-winning projects of the session (61 winners and 82 runners-up) and 82 projects with honorable mention. The latter are divided into five groups of sites classified according to themes:

Urbanizing with infrastructures

Generating the new

Recycling urban fabric

Building with nature

What sort of urbanity for inhabitants?

Each project (two pages per winner and one page per runner-up) is discussed on two levels – the urban design and the architectural project – with a descriptive text explaining the primary concepts.

The catalogue includes a number of articles explaining the European issues and comparing the themes of the prize-winning projects.

In "Urban dynamics of infrastructures", Socrates Stratis, architect, professor (Cyprus) analyses a group of projects that deal with spaces of mobility as driving force of urban development.

In "strategies for creating new", Jens Metz, architect, townplanner (Germany), scrutinises the attitudes of the projects on site in extension or which are being totally renovated.

In "Creating the town with what exists", Cornelius Brekke, architect, townplanner (Norway), analyses different processes to build the city upon the city.

In "Nature and artifice", Frédéric Bonnet, architect, town-planner (France), shows how the question of nature -beyond fashion- is taken into account within the prize-winning projects.

At last, in "Renewal of social housing: suburban village or city district? ", Didier Rebois, architect, General Secretary of Europan, highlights how young architects deal with the question of mutation of planned or spontaneous social housing districts.

The presentation of the winning projects finishes with:

- a presentation of the 82 projects designated noteworthy by the juries

- a rogue’s gallery with the teams’ photos and details

- the details of EUROPAN's national and European structures.

Editions EUROPAN, 2006.

360 colour pages, CD-rom

Edited in four languages: English, French, German, Italian.

On-line price: € 65

( including postage )