International Competition POST+CAPITALIST CITY

CollageLab launches its 2nd competition on the cycle POST+CAPITALIST City! After 1#SHOP, it's time to 2#WORK! In times in which machines are more profitable than men, urban centers adapt their structures towards information and services. But can those new growing sectors satisfy the global demand? How cities will organize themselves through this shift whereas flexibility and competition in work reach a new level? The psychological dogmas that formed the industrial society many decades ago, such as loyalty and lifelong commitment to an enterprise, were replaced with the fear of losing work, the guilt of not having work, or the question of how far would you go – geographically and ethically – for a job? Does our urban future lie in each becoming self-entrepreneurs, or to all share collective knowledge in forms of Open Source projects? Can we find new ways of producing and working?How will the global enterprise be able to produce sustainable levels of work through motivated workers, when nowadays humans are seen as resources and not workforces? How will the work of the future be measured, when the production of perceived, speculated value has no theoretical limits? Can work finally be released through technology? And finally: What are the possibilities for our cities? Apart from “job-sharing” and co-working spaces, what could be transformed spatially to change towards a sustainable working culture? For more information, visit '>http://www.collagelab.org'> date: 1st of July 2012 Questions Deadline: 1st of August 2012 Early Birds Registration Deadline: 1st of September 2012 Submission Dead Line: 1st of October 2012, 23:59 pm, European time (CET) Results announced: 1st of November 2012 Entry fee Early Birds (until 01.09.2012): 30 Euros / submission Entry fee from 01.09.2012 to 01.10.2012: 50 Euros / submission (No entry fees for participants from selected countries. Details on '>http://www.collagelab.org/en/post-capitalist-city-work/'> First Prize: From Corporate to Cooperate Neoliberal doctrine and its developed possibilities of ‘debt’ capital have created an urban fabric where not only many are excluded but also its alimentation cost more than nature can regenerate. Dubai – as one of the most radical cases of social disparity and unrestricted transactional capital has an urban fabric which demands 4.5 of our planets to regenerate it. Since 90’ the economy of Dubai has seemingly grown because of ‘debt’ capital’s propelled construction and real estate industries. Dubai alone produces biggest CO2 emissions per capita on earth and is comparable with total carbon usage of whole North America. We are at a paradigm shift where skyline of skyscrapers stops being an icon of progress and becomes a symbol of our global destruction. We see this skyline as a capsulated energy of means of production which should be released by social power currently unemployed. We propose a scenario for Dubai which facilitates an alternative for unlimited growth and would function for the production of social and nature capital. We propose to use capital capsulated in Dubai skyscrapers and release it by recycling it. In that way we would not only employ more than 56 000 people that are currently jobless (and much other – young entrepreneurialism which would join the scenario) but also by recycling the city in the desert we could possibly multiple our earth ecological footprint three times. Dubai Co-operation Dubai cooperation is bottom-up generated cooperation which unites everyone willing not only to own its surplus previously taken by the capital but also to do a global ecological impact. By subscribing oneself in the cooperation one is asked to recycle its own house appliances as buy-in cost for the cooperation. Further he joins the de-growth movement in Dubai where he earns not only a recycled house at the end of his two years work but is also fully engaged into the Dubai community, therefore once again finding the good into the common. Equity Equity of Dubai’ co-operation is based in the point system where everybody works towards the set goal and have the same responsibilities, rights and earnings regardless the buy-in capital. A Roadmap for recycling Deconstruction of the whole fabrics that were built in the city of Dubai would reduce its CO2 emissions by half, and recycling of its materials and production of new nature capital would be able not only to make Dubai carbon neutral, but also give back extra nature capital to the planet. Only dismantling of a single Burj Khlafa building would save the planet a need for 220 620 ha of forests and reusing its construction materials could be recycled into 123 2-MW wind turbines, ecological housing for almost 6000 people and 20 000 solar panels bringing additional capital for nature. Nature design Everything in Dubai would be dismantled, recycled and reused in three main steps. Firstly, parks of the city would stop being watered. At the same time, all of the fabrics that were built, except industrial facilities, would be deconstructed. The recycling of the ex-building materials would be done in local industrial facilities, from where the created nature products - solar panels, wind turbines and eco housing parts - could be transported around the world. In the following step the remaining industrial facilities would be also dismantled and shifted. The remains of Dubai would consist of parts of derelict infrastructure slowly taken over by Dubai desert. The concluding nature capital that would be produced will create a new model - if everything in the planet would use resources like recycled Dubai we could produce 3 additional planets. Second Prize: Title: Fossilized Supra-Capitalism Success is no longer measured relative to life, but instead in terms of death. The amount of hours we put in before we die is now a dimension of our success instead of just a factor in the equation of efficiency and productivity. The meaning behind our existence, which each one of us determined at some point, is lost in a sea of deadly overtime and forgotten passion. We strive to retire, and we strive for vacation. Our addiction to hours eventually kills us, and is incurable, untreatable, and untouchable. How do you intervene when the addiction is invisible and by definition “productive?” Recent studies claim that hours do not lead to production and, in fact, produce services and goods that are subpar to those created by the hands and minds of those with a balance of time and talent. Working through lunch and into the night has reached extremes where the least efficient part of the day in many offices is the middle of the afternoon. Hours are a status symbol, hand in hand with the Porsche parked in the garage, and the miniature poodle under your arm. We replace hope of success with the unmitigated fate of overtime death. The original meaning we established for our personal investment in our careers has dissipated and been replaced by an addiction. We have created SUPRA-CAPITALISM: a society supported, guided, and defined by uncontrolled work habits, misguided productivity-to-time-spent ratios, and eventually our only relief lies in mandatory death. The dire and empty future that lies ahead for the increasing number of SUPRA-CAPITALISM victims must evolve (or devolve) into something reminiscent of the greatest times in world history, when passion led to success, and success was measured in happiness, time, and economic wealth. This project fossilizes SURPA-CAPITALISM and creates a self-built monument to those lost in the struggle of purpose and time. Specifically, this new system of work in the post-capitalist, supra-capitalist economic era begins with fertile slabs prepared to accept expansion and renovation as necessary. Structure allows the system to move upward and offices begin to form and mature, creating an efficiency zone that continues vertically, and includes ultra-efficient office space where hundreds of thousands of hours can easily be logged in private cubicles. As time passes, so do many employees who hit their magic number of hours. When this happens, each personal cubicle prepares for burial and transforms into a casket constructed with concrete. These caskets are placed nearby the employee’s place of work (and death) and eventually stack upon each other once deaths begin to outweigh current employees. As offices fade into sublime concrete forests of those who passed, the system begins to solidify. As ultra-efficient workplaces continue upward, usually containing 10-20 floors of the tower at any one time, the base begins to solidify, and eventually fossilizes those lost alongside the ideology of supra-capitalism. Fossilization provides an eerily natural landscape of lush flora rooted in the lives of those who achieved their hours. Here the living explore the past, just as we do with ruins of ancient cultures and the remnants of those not so forgotten. The greatest existing graveyard of past ideologies and wealth in production is Pittsburgh, United States. As wars pass and the necessity for materials like steel dwindles, so do the hopes and passions of an entire city. Rusted foundries and desolate factories dot the landscape of urban Pittsburgh and beg for nothing more than attention. Today Pittsburgh is a relatively successful, mid-sized city with a strong commercial foundation. This base, however, is rooted in unavoidable supra-capitalist ideals. The fossilization of these ideals is perfectly situated between the rusted steel plants of greater Pittsburgh and the glassy new towers in the city center. The system will immediately mesh with the nearby urban fabric as it purposefully decays and monumentalizes alongside the great remnants of the wartime boom. Witnessing these monuments to optimistic and forward-moving times reveals we very often work for nothing. The substance of our efforts is so diluted in the sea of time put-in, titles, and trepidation that our purpose is unclear. The seemingly abysmal and mandatory lifetime career creates a culture incomparable to those based on skills and labor. Time is the most valuable asset we will ever have, and we lose more every moment. We cannot save time to use as currency and we can no longer expect relief only in death. This project seeks to fossilize the core ideologies of supra-capitalism in a structure defined by our own loss. It is a hopelessly optimistic system which seeks to achieve an end to a self-destructive, self-obsessed, selfish era of meaninglessness and lost purpose.