University of Virginia Library

University Architects Awarded
Grand Prize At Cannes Festival

Two city planners from the
University have received one of
four grand prizes at the first annual
Festival of Buildings and Humanism
at Cannes, France.

Merete Mattern of Hamburg,
Germany, visiting professor of planning,
and Mario I. Sama, assistant
professor of planning in the University's
School of Architecture, were
awarded the golden Grand Prix by
France's Minister of Housing and
Equipment at the festival. Other
medalists represented France and
Switzerland.

The University team's proposal,
one of 13 models on display in
Cannes, projected a theoretical
community for the Fort Lincoln
area in northeast Washington, D.C.
More than 500 proposals from 28
countries were submitted for entry
in the festival in March. The
Mattern-Sama project was the only
American entry entered in the
festival designed to promote theoretical
research in town planning.

The University project, now on
display in Zurich, will go to
Austria, Paris, Rome and London,
before its return to the United
States.

Although their project will not
actually be constructed on the Fort
Lincoln site, the University planners
considered its terrain, railway
network and waterways for their
community serving about 6,000
lower income families and providing
a full range of educational
occupational, governmental and
recreational opportunities.

Mr. Sama, also assistant director
of the University's new Center of
Housing and Social Environment,
discussed some large-range results
of the festival on his return. Miss
Mattern is still in Europe visiting
her family.

Researchers hope that centers in
community planning will be set up
throughout Europe and eventually
in the United States in an effort to
solve specific urban problems, test
new materials and improve city life
in general, Mr. Sama said.

The centers, working together,
would be clearing houses for new
ideas and encourage closer relations
among architects interested in finding
new directions for urban architecture
and planning, he said.

"A site has already been provided
for the first center in Rome,"
the Italian native noted. Support
will come from government agencies,
educational institutions and
private industry, he said.

The Cannes Festival, sponsored
by French industry and government,
will give an annual opportunity
for research teams to display
their proposals and compare ideas,
Mr. Sama added.

He said the festival judges were
particularly impressed with the
emphasis on the human factor

displayed in the University proposal.

"Many projects stressed only the
mechanisms of construction, developing
elaborate construction systems
that could be repeated to
build either residential communities
or entire cities," he said.

"But they failed to consider
how people would live in their
systems. Cities become machines
that work extremely well, but
unfortunately the people living in
these closed, mechanical systems
run the risk of being reduced to
machines themselves.

"We emphasized how man can
find individuality in an urban
environment that today has become
too gigantic and too impersonal."