Competition for better cities launched in Romania

Cristina Blanaru CSR

ING Bank Romania and The Institute launched Urbaniada, a competition to award solutions aimed to improve livin in urban areas. The winners of the competition will receive awards between €15,100- €100,000 to translate the projects into reality, with the total amount to be awarded in prizes mounting up to €250,000.

Urbaniada is a public competition, open to architects, specialists, admen or NGO members who have architecture projects, projects for urban spaces or public interventions. The entries are open until December 14th 2015, on  www.urbaniada.net; the organizers are seeking projects with impact over large communities, specific to big cities, with a minimum population of 100,000 inhabitants.

We want to contribute to a better life within cities. This is one of our objectives, part of ING’s CSR strategy. Through Urbaniada, we are offering the possibility of a partnership between all those preoccupied by the quality of life in the city – architects, urban specialists, NGOs, with the purpose of finding real solutions and apply them

Iosefina Frolu, ‎

Corporate Communication Director ING Bank Romania.

The submitted projects will be evaluated by a jury of 9 specialists in areas like architecture, urbanism, sociology and antropology: Adrian Soare (Architect-Partner – SYAA), Andrei Serbescu (Architect-Partner ADN BA), Attila Kim (Architect), Bogdan Iancu (Lecturer Sociology Department SNSPA), Mircea Toma (president ActiveWatch), Oana Preda (Executive Director CeRe), Rudolf Grӓf (Architect-Partener Vitamin Architects), Teodor Frolu (architect, entrepreneur and co-founder Rowmania) and Vera Marin (architect, president of Urban Transition Association in Romania).

The judging will include 2 steps: an online stage and, following it, the first 8 projects will enter a second stage, when the candidates will present them in front of the jury and ING’s CSR board. The finalists will be announced on January 20th 2016 and the list of the winning projects will be made public by March 1st next year.