• Audi Urban Future: Project New York shows Manhattan 2030
  • Networked with the New York creative community
  • Exhibition opening and interdisciplinary discussions at the Festival of Ideas for the New City

How might Manhattan appear in the year 2030? The Audi Urban Future Initiative was established to look into the future of megacities and individual mobility. At the Festival of Ideas for the New City, held by the New Museum in New York from 4 to 8 May, Audi is bringing together architects, designers, artists and researchers to visualize ideas about the future of New York. Following the Audi Urban Future Award 2010 in Venice, this is the second venue of the Initiative.

A model of Manhattan in 2030 on a scale of 1:1200 will be created through the collaboration of the Audi Urban Future Initiative and the architecture community Architizer. The so-called Audi Urban Future: Project New York will be presented by the Audi Initiative in the Openhouse Gallery in New York from 7 to 9 May. Based on the visions of the architects involved in the Audi Urban Future Award 2010, five up-and-coming New York architecture practices, LEONG LEONG, Matter Practice, Abruzzo Bodziak Architects, Peter Macapia/labDORA and Marc Fornes & THEVERYMANY, LLC, will design a future Manhattan. Each team will devote its attention to one district of the city, for example Lower Manhattan, Central Park West or Midtown East.

In advance of the exhibition, the architects’ teams will work individually on the district that is assigned to them. During the exhibition the teams will join together, in order to allow the different areas with their differing scenarios for the future to fuse together at the margins. As this takes place, the results will be transferred to the model immediately. A camera will record the process – enabling visitors to the gallery to follow the progress on screens continuously.

Parallel to this the images will be made public on Facebook (for details see www.audi-urban-future-initiative.com). 

At this Festival Audi once again aims to have an intensive exchange of ideas with experts. “With the Audi Urban Future Initiative we as a globally operating company are exercising social responsibility”, explains Peter Schwarzenbauer, AUDI AG Board Member for Marketing and Sales. “In order to convert visions into reality more quickly, our experts are taking part in the debate about the city of the future. At the same time we are networking with experts from other disciplines – and in this way playing our part in shaping the urban future“, continues Schwarzenbauer.

Alongside a view of how the city of the future might look, the project also initiates wide-ranging discussions about urban development, infrastructure and research into the future. “Rather than a competition, Project New York acts as a laboratory to exploit the potential of collaboration, contingency and dissemination to reach beyond the limitations of the single idea, the individual city, and our present time,“ commented Troy Conrad Therrien and Christopher Barley, who are curating the project for Architizer.

The results of the Audi Urban Future Award 2010, which were first shown last year at the presentation of the Award in Venice, will also be exhibited in the Openhouse Gallery. The visions of Alison Brooks Architects (London), BIG Bjarke Ingels Group (Copenhagen), Cloud 9 (Barcelona), Standardarchitecture (Beijing) and the winner of the Award, J. MAYER H. Architects (Berlin), are intended to stimulate new discussions at the Festival of Ideas for the New City.

The Draw Think Tank, developed in cooperation with the Storefront for Art and Architecture, rounds off the activities of the Audi Urban Future Initiative in New York. In three different rounds of discussion, representatives of various disciplines, including experts from Audi, will exchange views about “Individual Mobility“, “Collective Spaces of Movement“ and “Urbanizing Technologies“. As this happens the participants will illustrate their thoughts by sketching them on iPads. The sketches will be combined into one image and projected onto the walls of the event venue, the so-called SpaceBuster.

The Festival of Ideas for the New City is organized by the New Museum. It is a joint initiative in which many New York institutions participate. The aim of the Festival is to combine creative forces for a common vision of the city of the future. The Festival takes place at many venues in New York City and is concentrated around three central platforms: a three-day, wide-ranging symposium, the StreetFest along Bowery Street and more than one hundred independent projects and events. Audi is supporting the Festival as one of the lead sponsors.

Program of the Audi Urban Future Initiative in New York:

Audi Urban Future: Project New York
Openhouse Gallery (201 Mulberry Street, New York City)
7 May, 12 noon – 7 p.m.; 8/9 May, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Audi Urban Future Award exhibition in New York
Openhouse Gallery (201 Mulberry Street, New York City)
7 May, 12 noon – 7 p.m.; 8/9 May, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Draw Think Tank
SpaceBuster, within the Festival area, corner of Houston Street/Chrystie Street
7 May, 4 – 7 p.m.
4 – 5 p.m.: Individual Mobility
5 – 6 p.m.: Collective Spaces of Movement
6 – 7 p.m.: Urbanizing Technologies

For further information about the Audi Urban Future Initiative, see:
www.audi-urban-future-initiative.com.
Here, you will also find pictures of the opening of the “Festival of Ideas for the New City“ from 9 May on.