The Southbank was an open, two-stage competition that aimed to produce visualisations of a new community for 2000-3000 people, in which residential accommodation merges with internationally significant facilities for arts production and performance, in a setting defined by ecological conservation.

The competition called on architects and designers to define and apply new spatial approaches in order to create a community that will serve as a model for sustainable living elsewhere on the continent and beyond. At the core of the competition were universally relevant questions: in a globalizing world, how can new spaces come into being that simultaneously acknowledge the creativity of its inhabitants, the abundance and fragility of its natural settings, and the dynamics of urban growth?