Masshtab Development Company is announcing a competition for the design of urban blocks for A101 Block City: an area of 127 ha with over 1 million sqm of housing in the A101 project. The A101 project is a new town of around 150.000 people and 13 million sq m of housing located south of Moscow.

The Urban Block competition is a one stage competition open to all architects.

The competition is based on the Block City concept that was developed by Bart Goldhoorn and Aleksander Sverdlov in the context of the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam in 2009.

The Block City concept aims at combining the advantages of standard design with the qualities embedded in the traditional city with its clearly defined urban spaces. This is done by defining a standard for the plot size of the urban block. When this standard is applied both in the design of urban areas and in the design of housing blocks, it is possible to use identical projects for housing blocks in different places while keeping their urban qualities.

The client is looking for projects for housing blocks with standard dimensions that can be applied in the Masterplan.

A second competition for the Masterplan has been launched on June 24.

The urban Block Competition program will be made public on July 14