HAMBURG, Germany, Oct. 10, 2013 — (PRNewswire) —   From October 15 to 28, 2013, Boston will welcome a shared exhibition by the two major symbols of Hamburg's ambitious urban design and re-development: The HafenCity Hamburg, Europe's largest urban development project, is expanding the city center of Hamburg by forty percent on former brown fields on the Elbe River. The IBA (International Building Exhibition) builds on a tradition of experimental design and urban planning with a seven-year project that is transforming an inner city island into vibrant and sustainable community living.

The exhibition, "Building the City Anew" will be presented at the Massachusetts State House, 24 Beacon Street, in Boston from October 15 through 28, 2013.  Hamburg's Minister for the Economy, Mr. Frank Horch, will preside over an official Hamburg-Boston reception on Tuesday, October 22.

Boston and Hamburg face a number of common development and sustainability challenges: large scale urban development, waterfront development, sea level rise, and harbor islands preservation. In fact, Boston architectural firm Kennedy&Violich Architecture designed one of the innovative buildings on display at the IBA.  Their design, The Soft House, was the competition winner for most adaptable live/work row housing and opened in March 2013.  It offers a new model for carbon neutral construction and an ecologically responsive lifestyle that can be personalized to meet individual homeowners' needs.

At the heart of the exhibition is an outsized compass pointing the way to the future city. The directional points of the compass have been replaced with four major themes: Growing City, Open City, Smart City and Civic City. These form the framework to explain the strategies which both projects are harnessing to meet the challenges of the future.

HafenCity ( www.hafencity.com) and IBA Hamburg ( www.iba-hamburg.de) share the vision of a European city meeting the challenges of the future without abandoning its own tradition. Through the exhibition, HafenCity and IBA Hamburg also seek to initiate an international debate on the future of large cities, informed by projects and experiences of other European cities.

SOURCE Hamburg Marketing GmbH