Foundation of the Audi Urban Future Initiative

The Audi Urban Future Award 2010 was the first step. Now Audi is linking this architectural competition to the long-term Audi Urban Future Initiative. Audi will hold constructive discussions with renowned experts about urban development and urban mobility, and incorporate the results into the work of the company on a permanent basis.

This dialogue with architects, urban planners, sociologists, economists and natural scientists is to be carried on boldly and without preconceived outcomes. Audi experts from strategically important departments will be involved from the very beginning.

An important part of the Initiative will be the Audi Urban Future Summit, which will premiere in September in advance of the IAA International Motor Show – and will be held every two years in future. International experts will present and discuss visions and challenges related to future developments in the context of the city.

Last year the Audi Urban Future Award marked the start of an even more intense engagement with issues of urban mobility. In the future the Award will be the second important component of the Initiative, along with the Summit. In May Audi is presenting the results of the architectural practices that took part – including the winning entry by Jürgen Mayer H. Architects, Berlin – at the “Festival of Ideas for a New City” (7 to 9 May) in New York.

In New York Audi is providing a preview of the content of the Audi Urban Future Initiative by means of the exhibition, but also through further workshops and activities. The “Festival of Ideas for a New City”, which is being organized by the New Museum, is taking place for the first time in 2011. It is a forum at which artists, architects and designers will present their ideas for the city of the future.

The third component of the Audi Urban Future Initiative will in the future consist of workshops entitled “Audi Inside”. The findings that emerge from the Summit and Award will serve as a basis when Audi experts work with external partners on ideas about mobility in the future. The results are intended to help press ahead when developing the automobile of the future with aims even more clearly in mind – in relation to architecture, transportation policy, strategies for mobility and urban development.

Rupert Stadler, chairman of the board of AUDI AG, explains the company’s motivation: “The courage to change ways of thinking and to question what exists is a decisive prerequisite for permanent progress and is the core of the AUDI corporate culture. This is why we have set up the Audi Urban Future Initiative, in order to draw attention to and press ahead along routes to a sustainable and responsible future.”

Saskia Sassen, sociologist and chairperson of the jury of the Audi Urban Future Award 2010, adds: “In the future the question of mobility will have to be considered more intensely and from many more angles than the purely technological one. Such an approach requires multiple forms of knowledge and a long term dialogue among specialists. This is why the Audi Urban Future Initiative has such relevance: it explores and identifies components in the emergent multi-layered mobility complex that have hitherto been overlooked.”

Stylepark AG in Frankfurt is curating the Audi Urban Future Initiative.
More at: www.audi-urban-future-initiative.com