We've got together with Dutch architects MVRDV to offer our readers the chance to win one of five copies of Green Dream - How Future Cities Can Outsmart Nature, written by The Why Factory foundation.

Above: Barcelona under a roof of urban farming, illustrating the impossibility of the concept

Through a series of 22 critical essays the book analyses the current state of sustainable practices and proposes radical new approaches in order to stimulate discussion.

The Why Factory is a collaborative think tank organised by MVRDV and the Delft University of Technology. Green Dream is their first published research project.

Above: The Amsterdam Canals illuminated with bioluminescent algae, visualizing an innovative alternative energy source

This competition is now closed.

Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the bottom of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

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Here's more info from MVRDV:

The Green Dream, How future cities can outsmart nature

The Why Factory and NAi Publishers present the research project  Green Dream, a comprehensive analysis of the current state of the debate and practice of sustainability and all related topics. The Green Dream is a comprehensive publication about the sense and nonsense of a subject which concerns us all and is often abused or misunderstood whilst being put into general practice. In 22 critical observations the book analyses in a broad way the issue and point towards solutions for a new approach.

Everybody is talking about Green these days; sustainable architecture and urbanism are getting almost universal attention. And they deserve it. Who could possibly oppose Green?

But there is also suspicion around Green. Research is contradictory. Conclusions are ambiguous. Born-again sustainability gurus are appearing out of nowhere, advocating new truths. Politicians and developers misuse ecology to promote their own agendas. Greenwashing has become the state-of-the-art marketing tool.

The Green Dream makes a series of alarming and sometimes contradictory observations on today’s state of the sustainability debate, theory and practice. It explores the topic in an analytical, yet experimental way. It encourages to look at Green from a wider perspective, to stimulate the discussion around Green and to speculate on a new green future.

One of the twenty-two critical observations that Green Dream makes about the current state of environmentally sustainable practice, is the tendency to focus on ‘small green deeds’. The interventions are too small and are too often disconnected efforts to attain the scale of and impact that is called for. Another observation is that Green progresses too slow; the pace with which research and innovation is implemented falls way behind the speed that is needed to keep up with the effects of the ecological crisis.

The Why Factory concludes that green is ultimately about performance. A calculator is proposed, which can measure how Green cities are, which makes their efforts in the field of sustainability comparable and ultimately effective. Visionary projects illustrate the green future that contextual, large-scale, imaginative and measurable architectural and urban projects might produce.

The Green Dream is the latest publication of The Why Factory, an independent think tank and research institute run by MVRDV and the University of Technology Delft. Its first publication was the in November 2009 published volume “Visionary Cities” a comprehensive agenda of the current architecture debate and the themes The Why Factory will research. The Green Dream is the first published research project of The Why Factory.

Congratulations to our winners! Roisin Lafferty in the UK, Caroline Joly in Canada, Michal Jonca in Poland, Jan Steven Tjandra in Indonesia and Karsten Schuhl in Germany.

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