Lecturer Adrian Phiffer received the Incentive Award in the Riga Circus Competition. A team of third year Master of Architecture students — including Angela Cho, Matthew Leander, Mariano Martellacci, and Avi Odenheinmer — also contributed to the winning submission. Competition participants developed sketches for the renovation of the historic  Riga Circus building in Latvia and a vision for the territory.

Writes Phiffer:

It is rare and fascinating to find a nomadic institution, such as a circus, permanently embedded in the center of a city. Usually, the circus is a temporary structure built at the edge of the urbia. It is kept on the outskirts out of fear. The circus brings with itself a new reality that can only be allowed for short periods of time. It is as if it is dangerous to allow its presence for too long because it might contaminate the empirical and monotone reality of the permanent urban form. This prompts a question of type: what kind of city is that one that accepts a circus in the middle of its fabric? It could only be a city that is always ready to expand its collection of realities, a city that has convictions, a city open to the new. Riga is such a city.
 

Congratulations to all involved!