BE OPEN and Cumulus are proud and happy to announce all four “Design for Sustainable Cities” winners!

The international expert jury of the “Design for Sustainable Cities” student competition, co-held by BE OPEN and Cumulus in support of the United Nations SDG Programme, have selected two of the four competition winners – the awardees of the Main Prize and the Safe City Prize.

• The Main Prize of €5,000 was allocated to the project with the highest jury’s score – that is Renova by a team of students from Politecnico di Milano, Italy: Beril Beden, Angela Corrado, Anika Rieth, Brenda Villafana, Luiza Braga, Mariah Giacchetta. The solution consists in salvaging good conditioned materials through deconstruction and setting up a platform to bring them together with potential buyers, turning waste into resource. This project aims to design a sustainable business model for city regeneration.

• The Safe City Prize of €2,000 was allocated to another high-scoring submission designed by a team of students represented by Zhixiang Yang from Shandong University of Art & Design, China – Urban renewal design around Qilu Hospital. The project offers a plan of renovation and redesign for the Qilu Hospital area, guided by the principles of urban renewal and historic protection; micro-introduction of 'big data', ‘smart city' and community management; as well as the 'sponge city' technology.

• The online vote defined our Public Vote Prize winner of €2,000 – our congratulations go to Catalina Mutis Gutiérrez from Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. Catalina is an architecture graduate from Bogota, and her Innovation Laboratory projects gathered over 5000 votes. Innovation Laboratory is an urban renovation project which allows experimentation in areas of architecture such as housing, public space and an innovation center in a disused block in the historical center of Bogotá.

• The awardee of the Founder’s Choice Prize has been selected by Founder of BE OPEN Elena Baturina: €3,000 go to Dharan Koruduvar of CEPT University, India. Dharan is a taking a Bachelor course in Urban Design. Sva: A Vision of Self-sustenance, pivots on the link between city, food and productive landscapes. Dharan proposes to design and introduce an ‘ideal sector’ for producing food on an everyday basis that deals with waste, water, energy, food on its own, and therefore is sustainable and self-sufficient.

BE OPEN and Cumulus once again thank all the participants, and invite them to partake in future competitions!

The focus of the competition is the United Nations’ SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. According to UN data, 2007 marked the shift to an urban world, with more than half of the world’s population now living in urban settings, cities and communities, and urban inhabitation is projected to rise to 60% by 2030. Cities and metropolitan areas are powerhouses of economic growth. However, this growth goes hand in hand with increased carbon emissions and escalating resource consumption.

Consequences of rapid urbanization are evident in growing number of slum dwellers, lack of decent and affordable housing, unplanned urban sprawl, inadequate and overburdened infrastructure and services (such as water and sanitation systems, waste collection, communication systems, energy sources, road and transport infrastructure, food supply chains), worsening air quality and access to clean water.