Post+Capitalist City #1 Shop Competition winners announced

The top 10 largest shopping malls in the world are located in the following countries: China, China, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Iran, Malaysia, Turkey, Malaysia, Philippines. As everywhere in the world, these huge boxes contain no windows, no connection between inside and outside, but thousands of offers and promises for a better life. The whole family can spend their free time inside without a notion of time. Each family member can find his personal pleasure, according to the size of the wallet.

This list shows that the rise of the mall seems to be more or less finished in the western world. The notion of sustainability and the growing precarity in all parts of society have meant that people are starting to search for alternatives and visit to local food markets are once more becoming a pleasure.

With this in mind CollageLab - a collective for research in architecture and urbanism, which brings its on-going ideas to life by means exhibitions, competitions, workshops and other publications – announced an International Competition POST+CAPITALIST CITY called "Shop" last April for redisigning the idea of the shop on a global level.

The list of winners has been published today and the winning idea is called “Workshop” – devised by KuanHao Chen, JuiHsuan Hou, Fa Likitswat – from Taiwan in Thailand. Their project starts with a question: What we can share? Their idea is a non-profit business model which takes advantages of capitalism and communism economics by giving people equal chances. In this kind of shop you can be both buyer and producer at the same time. It encourages people to shop for just what they really need, work with their creativity, interact with each others, and enjoy the simplicity of life.

Silver medal (in keeping with the Olympic spirit) goes Peter Salim from Indonesia for his “Prototyping Transformation”. In this project he proposes a 4-phased transformation process of the shopping mall to create a new public space. This new public space will replace the consumerist shopping mall with non-consumerist stations that promote public engagement and sharing and also provide opportunities for social interaction outside of the shopping mall. He calls the 4 phases: purge, procession, prototype and progress - leading to an era of sustainable consumption, guided by a principle of controlled freedom.

An honourable mention (Bronze Medal) also to Susanne Trumpf, Judith Frankenberg from Germany for their "CAL - The City Assembly Line". They use the image of the “assembly line” ( a typical symbol of modernism) and alter its primary function of mass production, into individual experience, knowledge gain and selected consumption. They change its meaning and shift its usability to post-capitalist society.

It is a radial, interconnecting network within the existing urban fabric, including the urban, suburban and rural scale. The CAL shuttle, a transport system connected to the CAL, transports goods, products, waste (as raw material) and people and their knowledge in all directions passing all metabolic cycles of production and consumption. Everybody is invited to share knowledge and take part in any step of the production.

Our congratulations to all the winners and remember Collagelab have just published the second International Competition POST+CAPITALIST CITY called "Work". You can download the full brief on Archilovers here or visit the collagelab website to submit your proposal and obtain more information here.