High-class jury for Audi Urban Future Award 2012 26.09.2012: International jury will choose winner of this year‘s Award Architecture prize with a value of 100,000 euros

    International jury will choose winner of this year‘s Award

    Architecture prize with a value of 100,000 euros

    Award ceremony on October 18 in Istanbul in the context of the Design Biennial



The award ceremony for the Audi Urban Future Award will take place on 18 October in Istanbul.


How will we travel in 2030? How will we live in megacities? In this year’s Audi Urban Future Award, five architects from five metropolitan regions from all over the world have taken on the challenge of working out a vision for the future of mobility in their cities.


A jury with an international composition will award the prize for the best architectural proposal on October 18 in Istanbul.



The members of the interdisciplinary jury for the Audi Urban Future Award 2012 are:


    Diana Barco, architect and founder of the Rogelio Salmona Foundation  (Columbia)


    Christian Gärtner, curator and board member of Stylepark AG (Germany)


    Adam Greenfield, network designer and founder of Urbanscale (USA)


    Harish Hande, board member and founder of Selco Solar India (India)


    Jürgen Mayer H., architect, founder of J. MAYER H. Architects and winner    of the Audi Urban Future Award 2010 (Germany)


    Rupert Stadler, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG (Germany)


    John Thackara, design theorist and director of Doors of Perception (Great Britain)


    Yeşim Ustaoğlu, film director (Turkey)


The architects will present their visions in a two-week exhibition at the Hasköy Spinning Factory in Istanbul. In the context of the exhibition, the jury will discuss and assess the architects’ visions for the future.


 In this process both the relevance of the ideas for the metropolitan region and their comprehensibility for visitors will be taken into account. The jury will also consider the design of the architects’ contributions to the exhibition and form a view on whether the theme of this year’s Award was suitably implemented.


This year’s theme is the future of mobility in the metropolitan regions Boston/Washington (Höweler & Yoon Architecture, USA), Istanbul (Superpool, Turkey), Mumbai (CRIT, India), the Pearl River Delta (NODE Architecture & Urbanism, China) and São Paulo (Urban-Think Tank, Brazil).


The task of the participating architects is to produce solutions for sustainable mobility. The architects’ visions, while being tailored to local conditions in their regions, should at the same time have global relevance. The most convincing vision will receive prize money to the value of 100,000 euros.


The approach taken in the winning proposals will also serve as the basis for a city dossier which Audi will plan and realize in collaboration with the winner in a pilot project.


The award ceremony for the Audi Urban Future Award will take place on 18 October at the Suada, a floating event venue on the Bosporus. The future visions of the five architects’ practices will be on view until October 26 in an exhibition at the Hasköy Spinning Factory.


For further information about the Audi Urban Future Initiative please refer to the official homepage: www.audi-urban-future-initiative.com. Further material is available for downloading via the following link: www.audi-mediaservices.com.


Details of the jury for the Audi Urban Future Award 2012


Diana Barco

Diana Barco is a Columbian architect who is principally interested in social aspects of public space. For several years she worked for Rogelio Salmona and in 1993 founded her own architectural practice in Bogotá. In 2006 Barco participated in establishing the Fundación Rogelio Salmona, of which she remains vice-president. Her aim is to communicate the importance of public space as a source of social cohesion.



Christian Gärtner

Christian Gärtner is a member of the board of Stylepark AG. He studied economics in Heidelberg and Berlin. After working as a management consultant he co-founded with Robert Volhard the Stylepark design platform in Frankfurt am Main in 2000.

Since then Christian Gärtner has initiated, conceived and engaged in a variety of projects in the fields of design and architecture, and advises companies in developing and optimizing specific competence related to the subject of design. Christian Gärtner is curator of the competition for the Audi Urban Future Award.



Adam Greenfield

From 2008 until 2010 the American author and designer Adam Greenfield worked for the Finnish cellphone manufacturer Nokia as head of design in the fields of user interfaces and services. In 2010 he founded Urbanscale, a consulting company for projects associated with the theme of networked cities.

He was one of the first to make investigations of the effects of computers on life in cities. In 2006 he wrote the standard work on this subject: “Everyware. The dawning age of ubiquitous computing.”



Harish Hande

Harish Hande is a social entrepreneur, and in 1995 was co-founder of the Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO) in India. His aim in this social enterprise is to supply solar energy to households in remote areas of India.

Today SELCO runs 25 solar service centers and has installed solar lighting systems in more than 120,000 households in rural areas of India. Harish Hande has a doctorate in energy technology, and has won a number of prizes for his social entrepreneurship and in the field of sustainable energy.



Jürgen Mayer H.

Before the establishment of his architectural practice in Berlin in 1996, Jürgen Mayer H. studied in Stuttgart, New York and Princeton. In 2003 he received the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in the category Emerging Architect and was also the recipient of the International Architecture Award of the Chicago Athenaeum (2009).

Mayer H. has taught at many renowned universities, including the Architectural Association in London, Harvard University and the University of Toronto in Canada. In 2010 Jürgen Mayer H. won the first Audi Urban Future Award.


Rupert Stadler

Rupert Stadler has been Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG since 2007 and a member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG since 2010. He began his professional career at Philips Kommunikations Industrie in Nuremberg.


In 1990 he moved to Audi in Ingolstadt, taking up responsibilities in the field of Controlling for Sales and Marketing. Following this, he was employed in various parts of the company, including roles as commercial managing director at Volkswagen/Audi España SA in Barcelona and as head of the Finance and Organization business unit.



John Thackara

John Thackara, a British design theorist, was director of the Netherlands Design Institute from 1993 to 1999. Today he is the owner of the production company Doors of Perception, and organizes international festivals and projects in which innovators work with designers to set new standards in the field of information and communication technology. He is also chairman of the European Design Industry summit.



Yeşim Ustaoğlu

Yeşim Ustaoğlu from Turkey studied architecture and is a journalist and film director. In 2008 her film Pandora’s Box enjoyed international success. This film about an old woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease won the main prize at the San Sebastián Film Festival, among other awards. Ustaoğlu made her breakthrough in 1999 with the film Journey to the Sun, which won 20 international awards, including the Peace Film Prize of the Berlinale.




Lisa Füting- photo Audi