Everyville 2008
Theme of the Competition
by Aaron Betsky
Everyville was just incorporated as a separate town, with a City Council of five members. The member who receives the most votes is the mayor for a four-year term. The city is looking into establishing its own fire and police departments. It is currently operating from the County Building, a multi-purpose set of offices on Avenue R. Now the City Council has to decide how to give Everyville coherence and identity. In a heated meeting in December of 2007, several factions proposed different strategies. Some felt that there was no government necessary, but that a strong police should operate from a monumental building that would have a jail attached. Others felt that Everyville should develop around a unified school building that would eventually also have a (junior) college or trade school, and that this campus should include civic functions. Yet a third group wanted a more traditional city hall that would serve as the new community’s core. But most of the participants felt that nothing of the sort was necessary, for civic buildings were a waste of money and time. “We need a Starbuck’s, that’s a real civic amenity,” was the final comment of the meeting.
In the end, the City Council voted to hire an architect to decide the question of how to give Everyville a focal point, a place or method of identity, and a home for shared services. They felt that architects would have the expertise to determine whether any new buildings would be necessary to do this, or whether what was really needed was a method of creating common and shared space with a clear and distinct Everyville identity. The use of commercial spaces in this effort was to be included. The Mayor in particular believes that what services there may be should be integrated into the school, the office park or the shopping area, so that they would be part of Everyville’s everyday life, and that what is really needed is a program that moves beyond buildings to create a character for this community. Above all else, she thinks that this character should take the form not just of identity programs and focal points, but also of guidelines that will help Everyville grow as a cohesive, environmentally sane and participatory community.
To accomplish this task, Everyville has therefore set out a Request for Proposals in which architects are asked to suggest how they might create an image, a coherence, a character and a civic sense for this small town, appropriate to its location and to its history, its site and its future. The proposal can be idiosyncratic. It may even be utopian. It should certainly be an evocation of a real place of community where there is right now none and that may be again just a series of fragments in sprawl a decade from, it should be an Everyville of the imagination and of memory, of hope and of fear.
The proposal must take the form of a series of drawings that will allow citizens to see what Everyville will look like in ten years, and how that community will make sense through the medium of architecture:
- one jpg file (dimension: 945x450 pixel, max 200 kb) that will include several drawings, among which at least one 3D general view of the project (admitted techniques: photomontage, virtual-digital model, photos of the maquette, drawing, perspective)
- a text, English language, describing and explaining the concept of the project: maximum length 1000 characters (including spaces)
- one jpg file (dimension: 945x450 pixel, max 200 kb) that will include several drawings, among which at least one 3D detail view of the project (admitted techniques: photomontage, virtual-digital model, photos of the maquette, drawing, perspective)
- a text, English language, describing and explaining the project’s main details: maximum length 1000 characters (including spaces).
The deadline for the submission is July 15, 2008.
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