The Exodus Competition

The Exodus Competition

Our cities are full of the marginalized.

Some cities ignore Them.

Some cities hound Them.

Some celebrate Them.

But they are always “Them”

_{Murfad Nam’a}

How could a city encapsulate and celebrate its diversities in a physical form?

The modernist, utilitarian paradigm in urbanism has so far proved inadequate.

Monocentric, divided exquisitely according to functions, potentially endless, and endlessly dead.

Could a city be aggressively divided according to its diversities; be limited, enclosed, and exciting?

We are calling for radical and insightful proposals for new and possibly ludicrous urbanities.

But new urbanities which are firmly set within the even more ludicrous failures of our modern cityscapes.

The site of the competition is metropolitan London (the area politically under the control of the GLC).

The population of London is diverse and fragmented, but you wouldn’t know it from its relentless rows of identical houses, or tube lines instantly linking everywhere and more with fat black, blue, red and yellow graphical lines. This unity in the city’s form flattens individual desire, and the city’s unrelenting connectivity destroys the potential of its dormant differences. We would like contestants to wake those differences, to tease out the hidden strangeness in London and optimize its marginalities.

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Each of the four chosen entries spring from a specific historical precedent.

The proposals will be released and critiqued next week.