For centuries people have settled in places, built villages, modified the environment, and "manufactured landscapes," occupying the land in some way. We have become sedentary. Our being in the world expands and devours the soil. Satellites show us the extent of our cities and the ramifications that connect them. From the plane, we see specks of light-like constellations filling the void. This main human activity determines flows of capital and, therefore, power. Power fuels ambitions as a shortcut, and this generates conflicts. The city becomes a mirror of human unease, a manifestation of the inability to guarantee equal rights and peaceful coexistence.

© Carsten Horn from the series ""When home is getting gentrified"

By the end of the 20th Berlin became a pilgrimage destination for artists, making it famous worldwide for its welcome and progressive temperament. After a long lethargy lasting decades, its inhabitants demolished the walls and opened up to an idea of ​​a city based on hospitality, development, and social emancipation. The large availability of affordable housing fueled this success. Today, however, the city is less friendly; as Carsten Horn tells us: "Rents are rising abruptly, the tenant structure of entire city districts is changing. Displacement is taking place. This phenomenon is discussed a lot in the media and politically. My work is a very personal examination of the consequences of gentrification." Gentrification is a term developed in sociology and gradually entered the common language to indicate real estate or urban regeneration processes that raise the value of properties and consequently tend to expel the less well-off inhabitants and alter the social mixité. The series "When home is getting gentrified" (special mention Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021 - category: Representations of Space, Architecture, and Conflicts) reminds us that there is no antidote to this form of speculative aggression, which increases precariousness and uncertainty of people. At best, some regulations delay evictions or generate price caps, yet this results in prolonged agony. The concept of home is reduced to a commodity, and those who cannot afford a mortgage or buy an apartment become victims of "market whims" and "civic oppressions." How does this rampant global phenomenon impact? Not only does it eradicate the sense of belonging and the spirit of community, but as Horn writes: "My children grow up with the feeling that their home is not safe. They are often angry when interested people stroll through the house and yard again".

© Carsten Horn from the series ""When home is getting gentrified"

© Carsten Horn from the series ""When home is getting gentrified"

For centuries the "urbe" constituted a sort of "utopian place" that embodies the principles of freedom and justice. Sergio Lovati borrows the title "Città del Sole" from Tommaso Campanella to frame his urban meditation. But if the work of the Dominican philosopher embodies the post-feudal hopes fueled by the discoveries of the Enlightenment, the city of Lovati is far from shining. There is very little of the sun and of that spiritual power that one would expect. He claims, "The result is not a recognizable city but the "Invisible City" that gives voice to my questions and concerns about our society. A feeling of anxiety and threat runs through it. It is the anxiety that comes from living in a continuous state of emergency and from experiencing a permanent uncertainty about the future. It is the threat of the possible consequences." The city of Lovati manifests in images the uncertainties of tomorrow, a lost euphoria, and the betrayal of hope. Flat, gray, almost dirty. Restlessness reigns in the soul of the city and its inhabitants. 

© Sergio Lovati from the series "La città del sole"

© Sergio Lovati from the series "La città del sole"

© Sergio Lovati from the series "La città del sole"

Rea Lamprini Papadopoulou, with the series "The Lake You Don't See", focuses on the theme of legality in urban transformations. Greece accepted informal buildings for years. People camped on the beaches and built makeshift shelters with what they found. To some extent, this reflected the economic state of things and a certain refractoriness to rules, a Mediterranean "laissez-faire." Then the author tells us, "Over the years some of these ephemeral encampments were transformed to permanent settlements." Precisely because of that innate will of humans to settle down, to justify their garden. With time though, Greece started to adjust to European guidelines and determined, vigilant, uncompromising urban planning culture. "Wild behavior" became less tolerated. The Greek author (special mention Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021 - category: People and Communities) tells us that these families were finally "evicted from the landscape." And in 1999, they were given an area to build their dream homes. However, sooner or later, you have to wake up from dreams. And so, later, in 2018, an ordinance obliged them to take their things and leave. When looking at the austere families and the modest size of their homes, the impression is that it is more likely their faces rather than their homes to bother authorities.  

© Rea Lamprini Papadopoulou from the series "The Lake You Don't See"

© Rea Lamprini Papadopoulou from the series "The Lake You Don't See"

© Rea Lamprini Papadopoulou from the series "The Lake You Don't See" 

The work by Renato Gasperini, "A macchia di Leopardo" (shortlisted Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021 - category: Representations of Space, Architecture and Conflicts), helps expand the debate on the contemporary city. We have long recognized the city's primacy, centrality, and purely urban character. Of its qualities and distinctive characteristics, we could say. The caesura between the rural and urban worlds was clear-cut, marked, and almost spiritual. The city was the depository of knowledge, techniques, innovations, and, today, finance. However, this gap has been closing. In some way, the urban philosophy that contains within itself the potential verb of transformation, or rather a certain restlessness, became jeopardized and reproduced as an epidemic. Today fragments of the city are everywhere; the hegemony of the urban doctrine has taken over the landscape. Gasperini, with his series of photographs, invites us to observe the quality of these traces as he writes: "today the environment is highly anthropized, and modern and contemporary man, even when he withdraws from a place, here leaves the mark of his passage, in the form of poor and sometimes alienating as well as incomprehensible artifacts." If it is the diversity that connotes the environment, through the shapes and colors of the species, on the contrary urbanism manifests itself as a form of anonymous colonialism, through an "aesthetic reiteration" and a "functional coding." From this point of view, it is extraordinarily effective in adapting to any context, injecting principles of alienation that gradually modify behaviors through their normalization.

© Renato Gasperini from the series "A macchia di leopardo"

© Renato Gasperini from the series "A macchia di leopardo"

© Renato Gasperini from the series "A macchia di leopardo"

Our Annual Institute Awards Contest is always an opportunity to collect addresses, ideas, perspectives, arguments, criticisms, awareness, and possibilities.