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A Community Gathering Place
A Community Gathering Place
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A Community Gathering Place
A COMMUNITY GATHERING PLACE
The theme of this year's competition is architecture for a new type of community gathering place. It should be neither a conventional community center of the type commissioned by local governments, nor a completely informal space of the type that appears spontaneously. It should be a place where residents can gather to meet their fellow citizens and enjoy a richly fulfilling sense of community.
The modern community center was premised on the idea that local communities are the permanent homes of most of their residents. In that context, the community center was intended to function as the core of the local social network. But this idea didn't work. As society became more mobile, the falling percentage of permanent residents led to dispersion and diversity. Instead of returning to their neighborhoods, people shifted the focus of their social lives to alumni meetings, coworker gatherings, and interest groups. With the spread of information technology, mobile phones and e-mail became the primary means of communication, resulting in restricted opportunities for face-to-face contact.
Recently, however, the average age of the population is increasing and many communities have gained more permanent residents. People are looking for a place to share with the neighbors that they greet on the street every day. This is the birth of a new kind of social order. In contrast to the orderly mechanisms of theory, it is emerging in new and unexpected ways.
Is there anything that architecture can do to support these new developments? We would like applicants to approach the theme from the standpoint of contemporary requirements and to propose community gathering places which, while sidestepping distinctions between public and private, will represent solutions to the constraints and opportunities of the local communities where they are located.
We expect the proposals to differ in scale, conception, and execution. Some will be for small towns, and others for the residents of urban districts. Some will be for new towns, and other for mature neighborhoods. Different requirements will naturally call for different responses. Unlike community centers designed according to the conventional view of modern society, they will lack a single set of defining characteristics. But we do expect each proposal to be an attractive space in its own right.
We would like applicants to propose community gathering spaces that meet the requirements of specific places, scales, and mechanisms, approaching the theme from the standpoint of architectural solutions for the present and the future.
The theme of this year's competition is architecture for a new type of community gathering place. It should be neither a conventional community center of the type commissioned by local governments, nor a completely informal space of the type that appears spontaneously. It should be a place where residents can gather to meet their fellow citizens and enjoy a richly fulfilling sense of community.
The modern community center was premised on the idea that local communities are the permanent homes of most of their residents. In that context, the community center was intended to function as the core of the local social network. But this idea didn't work. As society became more mobile, the falling percentage of permanent residents led to dispersion and diversity. Instead of returning to their neighborhoods, people shifted the focus of their social lives to alumni meetings, coworker gatherings, and interest groups. With the spread of information technology, mobile phones and e-mail became the primary means of communication, resulting in restricted opportunities for face-to-face contact.
Recently, however, the average age of the population is increasing and many communities have gained more permanent residents. People are looking for a place to share with the neighbors that they greet on the street every day. This is the birth of a new kind of social order. In contrast to the orderly mechanisms of theory, it is emerging in new and unexpected ways.
Is there anything that architecture can do to support these new developments? We would like applicants to approach the theme from the standpoint of contemporary requirements and to propose community gathering places which, while sidestepping distinctions between public and private, will represent solutions to the constraints and opportunities of the local communities where they are located.
We expect the proposals to differ in scale, conception, and execution. Some will be for small towns, and others for the residents of urban districts. Some will be for new towns, and other for mature neighborhoods. Different requirements will naturally call for different responses. Unlike community centers designed according to the conventional view of modern society, they will lack a single set of defining characteristics. But we do expect each proposal to be an attractive space in its own right.
We would like applicants to propose community gathering spaces that meet the requirements of specific places, scales, and mechanisms, approaching the theme from the standpoint of architectural solutions for the present and the future.
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