Audi Urban Future Initiative at NYC’s Festival of Ideas

The New Museum’s first ever “Festival of Ideas for the New City” took place in New York recently as a way to collaborate with the creative community to effect change, and Audi helped to lead the charge. Not only did the automaker support the festival as a lead sponsor, but also debuted its Urban Future Initiative as part of the innovative weekend. This project aims to bring together different visions on how mobility, urban living and the role of the transportation will change in the coming years. For the festival, Audi presented a 50-foot interactive exhibit called “Project New York,” in which five emerging NYC-based architects presented concepts of a futurist Manhattan. For more on Audi, see your area Dale City Audi dealer.

“With the Audi Urban Future Initiative we as a globally operating company are exercising social responsibility,” explains Peter Schwarzenbauer, board member of AUDI AG for marketing and sales. “In order to convert visions into reality more quickly, our experts are taking part in the debate about the city of the future.”

“The years ahead may well define new understandings about the future of urban living and mobility,” says Johan de Nysschen, President, Audi of America. “So it is a privilege for Audi to kick off a discussion on diverse visions of this future here in New York through the work of the Audi Urban Future Initiative.”

“Audi Urban Future: Project New York” envisions a new city based on the award-winning concepts from the inaugural Audi Urban Future Award hosted in 2010 in Venice, Italy. Alongside a view of how the city of the future might look, the project also initiates wide-ranging discussions about urban development, infrastructure and research into the future.

Also during the Festival, Audi joined with the innovative architectural institution Storefront for Art and Architecture and interdisciplinary thinkers to develop approaches and solutions for urban planning. The event featured a collective sketch session via an iPad app, with the images projected onto the walls in real time. Audi also hosted a discussion forum with important pioneering New York thinkers from the fields of design and architecture to consider new findings and practical implementation in relation to future-oriented urbanity and mobility.

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