PUPA (Public Urbanism Personal Architecture)
Multitalented City. Category: competition
Preparation: 2011
Address: Moulin de la Housse, Reims, France
Architects: Tadas Jonauskis, Justina Muliuolytė, Lukas Rekevičius

The youthful PUPA creative duo of Tadas Jonauskis (1983) and Justina Muliuolytė (1985) have in a relatively short time managed to win recognition at a large number of architectural competitions in Lithuania and abroad. Collaborating with various other architects, urban planners and specialists in other disciplines, the architects assert that only those who are able to comprehend the most important processes of urban growth and life are capable of offering anything distinctive or unique. The firm’s name PUPA (Public Urbanism Personal Architecture) reveals the creative standards held by the duo.

The Multitalented City project, which won first prize in the Europan 11competition in France, proposed a strategy of urban planning to demonstrate how a deteriorating suburb of Reims could be transformed into a new centre. The architects proposed joining the existing open spaces and landscapes into one continuous public space, highlighting the identity of the location, and transforming the existing valuable buildings. The key element of the project consists of five squares joined to a wider system of public spaces, thereby creating a new image for the location. The architects say that their project demonstrates that ‘a sustainable lifestyle is directly related to the spatial organisation of the area.’ The squares in this project are a significant part of daily life: the separate functions are grouped into clusters, and each square has its own specific identity.