Our City Anthology Festival 2021

We spend more than 90 percent of our lives in our city. We eat, sleep and work here. We grow up and raise our children here.

For the last 6,000 years, the story of man has been intertwined with that of our cities. Our populations have long been thriving in our urban environment. More than half of humanity now live in cities. More than 4 billion people are living on 3 percent of the world’s land mass.

We have laws and advocacies to protect and care for our natural environment. Yet where are the laws and regulations that protect our urban environments? We have building codes and urban plans that control and determine the safety and growth of our homes and cities. We control this artificial environment we have built around us, but oftentimes we forget that, as with most things, it, too, needs care and protection.

If degradation of our natural environment harms so many of the world’s wildlife, degradation of our urban environment harms us directly. The quality of our public spaces, the accessibility of open spaces, the preservation of our urban history and heritage, and the efficiency of our roads all affect our physical and mental health and balance. Yet what else lies beyond that?

How do we take care of the natural, physical and human aspects of our urban ecosystem? How do we extend our attention beyond the physical spaces that we occupy and own into the urban relationships that determine the well-being of our cities? What are the socio-ecological systems that we’re forming with each and every structure we build?

Anthology is a festival that brings together architects and designers, policy makers and advocates, to shine a spotlight on our built environment. This year, we are seeking to create awareness about our city, about its physical and social aspects, about its health and well-being, about how we should care about this urban environment we have built to protect and provide for the vast majority of humanity.

This year’s festival, with the theme “Our City,” will be held online from March 19 to 21. We are bringing together everyone in our community to celebrate and share their ideas for our cities. The festival is open to everyone and will be streamed live on YouTube and Facebook. We are also inviting everyone to participate in our chatrooms via Zoom and Viber. Registration is now open at Anthologyfest.org.

We will have three blocks of programming each day. The festival begins at 2 p.m. with a live tour of our Anthology Gallery as well as reveals and special guests each day. Shelter Dialogues will begin at 4 p.m. with a discussion on this year’s theme while Anthology Talks will cap the day with a keynote lecture.

We have three competitions this year. The first one is the “Anthology Visualization Competition: Our Neighborhood” where everyone is invited to visually map out and present their own neighborhoods and communities. The second is “Anthology Digital Art Competition: Reimagine Our City” where everyone is asked to pitch in their vision of a dream city through digital art. The third one is “Anthology Design Competition: Revamp Our Jeep” where we seek everyone to rethink and redesign the everyday jeepney. Each winner will receive $500 and finalists will be featured at the Anthology Gallery this year. Participants must register at Anthologyfest.org.

We invite everyone to actively join the discussion this year during, before and after the festival. We have set up an architecture community on Viber for everyone to join and we hope to have everyone engage in our various chatrooms and platforms as we collectively strive to garner attention and focus ideas on “Our City.”

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