Out of 69 submissions by participants from 21 nations the jury has now nominated six concepts for the shortlist, to be elaborated further over the summer.

Ephemeral Landscapes: Redefining the narrative of urban space | Julia Dorninger, Vienna (AT)
Ephemeral Landscapes questions established planning processes, methods in architecture and its parameters as well as the rigid structures resulting of these planning specifications. Ephemeral Landscapes evokes radical rethinking in the development of space, which is here primarily understood as an empty space which generates needs. This physical vacuum has the energy for material expansion: movement and actions assign space its functions. Resulting in a continuous process, in which spaces are continuously developed depending on situations.

Hecate_Non Visible City | Yota Passia, Panayotis Roupas, studioentropia architects, Athens (GR)
The project theorizes the city as multiple structures of properties, tendencies and capacities. While properties can be observed, tendencies and capacities lie in the virtual level, they are only actual when exercised. Hecate is an interactive city scape, which is visualized as a network of richly interconnected nodes of varying intensities, each representing information flows between the system and the city. Hecate associates and disassociates, controls, determines and consumes both existing and emerging urban structures.

Posthuman ARCHE | Ka-man (Carmen) Lam, Weimar (DE)
Under pressures of new developments from the Anthropocene to the Technosphere, named a “posthuman condition”, our practices of restoring human habitants demand a deep rethink. This presents the imminent question: How should human collective on earth be replanned or reimagined? The proposal calls for a new collective among the posthuman subjects, non-human actors, earth system, natural resources and infrastructural networks, which then forms a missionary crew. Inspired by the well-known biblical story, the act of pairing is re-interpreted as algorithmic strategies for reciprocity and resilience.

The Domestic Discontinuous | Ioana Suliciu, Vienna (AT)
Increasingly, people inhabit temporary homes and combinations of flats. The home is no longer a monolith, but a myriad of discontinuous living environments, re-meshed through a continuous presentation of its instagrammed contents and exchange between its often discontinuous components. Imagine a series of freely assemblable spaces, each suitable to different needs, like a hobby, job or partner constellation or simply to a specific life phase. The distinction between private and public will blur even further and mixes of use or social groups will be supported.

The New Anthropocene | Jan Sienkiewicz, Copenhagen (DK)
The New Anthropocene is an exploration of the two forces that shape human society in the 21th century - technological progress and radical humanism. The empowerment of the individual is faced with an emergence of non-human intelligences, creation of fully immersive simulations and the resulting explosion of reality into a multifaceted hyperreality. As a result of humanisation of the network and a structured simulation, a system of mutual understanding between human and nonhuman intelligences is built, shaping the spaces in a continuous process of reconstruction.

The Permanently Temporary: in the age of gravity-independent architecture | Viktória Sándor, Vienna (AT)
Emerging issues due to population growth in urban environments and changing patterns of social behaviour require new strategies for architecture and urban design. The contrast between the rigidity of the physical environment and the rising value of flexibility generates tension. One way of facilitating to release this tension is increasing the level of adaptation and responsiveness of the physical space and therefore programming the existing city volume more efficiently. Aerial robots could provide temporary spaces that are integrated with the existing urban-fabric to increase the city’s dynamism.