Shortlist announced: Greyhound Opening site, Norwich

The shortlist is announced for the competition to design a new mixed tenure, affordable housing development on the Greyhound Opening site in Norwich.

The Delivering Affordable Housing Partnership (DAHP) - a partnership of Norwich City Council, Broadland Housing & Orbit Housing Partnership, Circle Anglia Ltd, Flagship Housing Group and Lovell Partnerships Ltd - was astounded by the phenomenal response to the competition. 101 Expressions of Interest were received from architects based in the UK, Eire, Japan and the Netherlands.

The Jury Panel consisted of a former Greyhound Opening resident, together with representatives from the DAHP, the Housing Corporation and Clare Wright (Wright & Wright Architects) acting as the RIBA Architect Adviser. With such a strong field of applicants, Panel members faced an embarrassment of riches and arriving at a shortlist was an extremely difficult task. The Panel selected practices which they felt would be most capable of helping the DAHP to deliver an innovative high quality development, with an appropriate density of accommodation that can be built, will be financially viable within social housing constraints and have the potential to enrich the neighbouring community. The five short-listed practices (in alphabetical order) are as follows:
- Letts Wheeler Architects
- Maccreanor Lavington Architects
- Make Architects
- Riches Hawley Mikhail Architects
- Shedkm Architects

The short-listed practices will be invited to develop design proposals for the 1.2hectare Greyhound Opening site and present them to the Jury Panel at a final interview in late January 2009.

Architectural League - Design Event

UrbanOmnibus.net and the Architectural League of New York are are hosting a design event in New York City November 14-17 in conjunction with Design Corps and Metropolis books. Our competition-like program seeks to demonstrate the possibilities for urban improvement through small, elegant design interventions that are conceived and built all in a weekend. A design brief will be given Friday night at the Urban Center, the home of the Architectural League, to a group of six selected teams, who then will document their design process over the weekend to present at a small event on Monday, November 17.

We hope to attract a diverse array of teams from many disciplines, including architects, designers (graphic, interactive, etc.), programmers, landscape architects, visual artists, musicians and sculptors. If you know anyone who would be interested in participating, please contact us at the the phone number below.

Sarah Snider
Executive Assistant
The Architectural League of New York
457 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022
t. 212.753.1722
f. 212.486.9173
www.archleague.org�

RIBA Competition Housing Exhibition

This exhibition showcases a range of housing projects that have originated through RIBA Competition
Venue: CUBE Gallery, 113 - 115 Portland Street, Manchester
Dates: 17th October to 20th December 2008
A new winter exhibition organised by the RIBA Competitions Office opens in October showing a selection of housing projects that have originated through RIBA competition.
This exciting and varied choice of projects shows the wide range of solutions generated through architectural competitions and will include:

• the six shortlisted entries from the competition to develop 400 Student Residences at the University of Warwick;
• the seven shortlisted entries from the LEX, Walsall Waterfront development
• the winning design for the Lawrenny Sustainable Housing Development in Pembrokeshire;
• the completed building project for the Elmswell 'Clay Fields' Affordable Housing project, which is a ground-breaking 26-home scheme committed to sustainable development;
• the design development for the Bradford House competition as it nears completion; an inspirational modernisation of Victorian housing typologies
• details of the new competition launched on behalf of Urban Splash for 250 market-priced and affordable family homes as part of the North Shore project area in Stockton-on-Tees
• information on the recently launched Nationwide Student Sustainable Housing Competition�

Winner announced: 2008 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture

In his most recent book, published in 2007*, the pioneer of political ecology André Gorz writes of his hope for a forthcoming ecological urban revolution: "It is likely that it will be South Americans or South Africans who – in the abandoned suburbs of European cities – will be the first to recreate the self-production workshops of their home favela or township." His wish is becoming a reality, since it is the South African Carin Smuts who has been awarded the 2008 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture at Villa Savoy in France.

Born in 1960 in Pretoria, Carin Smuts comes from a family of politicians and philosophers (her great-uncle Jan Christiaan Smuts was one of the renewers of holistic thought), who were unflinching in their opposition to apartheid. After early ambitions to be a doctor, Carin chose to study architecture, in the belief that "this career would enable her to make an even greater difference to society".

Since 1989, Carin Smuts has worked in the townships, now free of apartheid but still excluded from the development process going on elsewhere.

Is the architecture she practises sustainable? She says it is, emphasising how: "a sense of economy, an intelligent use of materials, are the very ethics of architecture! But to build in the townships, people must first be able to express a need, formulate a programme, know how to put it into practice. Experience has taught me that this is impossible if people have not regained their own freedom. For me, architecture is simply the means for these people to regain charge of their own lives. Our work is about people."

With extremely small budgets, Carin Smuts builds amenities, housing, services, not only for but with the black communities. They work with her to establish the programme, and then build and manage it themselves. A Carin Smuts project generates more cultural energy than it uses materials. Just as the Bengali Muhammad Yunus invented micro-loans, Carin Smuts has invented sustainable micro-development, an approach that she sums up in a single phrase: "Do local: materials, details, labour."

As the winner of the 2008 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, Carin Smuts has been commissioned to build the second project in the Seine-Aval Architecture Manifesto-Collection: a multipurpose centre which will revitalise the small town of Follainville-Dennemont. The first project, a rural lodge in Chanteloup, has been commissioned from the 2007 winner Hermann Kaufmann and will open in spring 2009.