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Ideas and innovation, competition and research - roland bosbach
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With more than 250 entries and complex requirements from cost-schedules to a structural report this was an exciting if not unreal challenge for a small practice with no track record of building 150m high in the sky. But it provided the radical and challenging brief needed to investigate pressing topics and to evolve the underlying working methods. And it is somehow tragic that one has to look as far as Singapore to find suitable competitions for this kind of investigation despite the ongoing radical transformations that the Ireland of today is witnessing. Which leads to the question whether young architects in Ireland should pursue their investigation on an independent level to find alternative visions for homegrown dynamics. With a range of local award schemes and funding (Artscouncil grants, the new Kevin Kieran Award, AAI Awards etc.) at hand and an open European market there is nothing to stop them. Design team Singapore: Roland Bosbach, Rebecca Egan

Footnotes:
^[1] To speed up development in the new Bundesl�nder after reunification, the eligibility to sign for planning applications was extended from architects to engineers. This was seen as a step towards further deregulation of the market curtailing the already weak position of architects in former East Germany.
^[2] Supermarketcity is based on an initial study of the supermarket as an evolving contemporary institution driven by changing economic patterns and communication in a market driven environment. This resulted in a study of the impact of marketing techniques in assessing urban contexts and informing changing briefs for architectural products in a pattern similar to how the commercial products in supermarkets are shaped.
^[3] See also www.europan.de/europan_5_6/3i_set and AAI catalogue 17.
^[4] Comprehensively described in Singapore - Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis, by Rem Koolhaas, SMLXL.
^[5] See www.ura.gov.sg/competition/index.html for more information and results.