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Azerbaijan

Baku is an industrial oil city and the country's primary export - oil and gas is sucked off from the Caspian Sea which has a significant contribution to the city's identity, infrastructure, design, and culture as well as its economy. The oil industry has been expanding and shaping the destiny of Baku for almost more than 5 decades now and without it, neither the city could be the way it is now, nor the country. The industry brings major challenges to the city during resource-demanding oil production by emitting alarming levels of greenhouse gases, polluting air and water bodies, degrading land, and mismanaging toxic oil waste. As a result of it, the Caspian Sea is highly polluted, and most coastal areas of the sea even have a hazardous level of toxicity for swimming. On top of everything, most citizens are very irresponsible with their trash around the coast and it adds up to the catastrophic pollution of the Caspian. The city’s major identity comes from the Caspian Sea, however, it is heartbreaking to see the trash and oil leakage pounding the shores of the 16 KM long Baku Boulevard when you walk along it. Due to the mismanagement of waste and lack of public awareness the shores are getting dirtier every other day and it is becoming impossible to find a clean spot to swim in the summer to survive the heat waves. Also, the privatization of the beaches is another challenge, and access to clean shores is becoming more and more commercialized and expensive to enter. Thus, access to swimming is becoming very exclusive for the working class and many had to bear the smell, inconvenience, and ugliness of public beaches.

Denmark

Georgia

Grandfather in his last days was asking Grandma (Bebo)- "to whom you will stay, when I pass away?" Grandma (Bebo) stayed with grandson named simillarly as grandfather.

United Kingdom

Albania

The architect without qualities is a personal story about the controversies of contemporary architectural practices –especially the ones working on an international level– and the clash of their activities with an architect’s personal ethical values. The author reports its own experience of working on a massive masterplan development in Tirana and seeing the subsequent real-estate development. The experience brought him to question his role in the construction industry and more in general the role of the contemporary architects in the wellbeing of the citizens. Through an exploration of its own project the author tries to shift from a tormented egocentric intellectual posture to one based on listening and direct contacts with the others.

Ukraine

Our short film investigates matters of urban spaces and their perception and critically approaches their potential for the adaptation of new residents. The particular potential of becoming a new or a second home to each individual. How easy is it to achieve this effect, and how can we measure this city's quality? Can the urban landscape define notions of home, and what properties of the city's spatial organization can create a homelike atmosphere? The notion of home is very personal to everyone, it is hard to quantify, but the concept is united by a strong shared sense of values. Home means a friendly place, a comfortable one, accessible and open. Such a perception can contribute to the natural development of both young people and adults. This story is about two friends who recently moved from their native Kyiv to Berlin and Warsaw and faced the need of adaptation to the new context, both cultural and urban. We reflected on the process of interaction with the new urban environment, up to the point where the new city and its architectural landscape started to shape the sense of a home.