Building a Bike Highway

The video of the presentation for GOOD Ideas for Cities is up, along with a nice write-up from organizer Alissa Walker from GOOD - so enjoy. Also check out some more detail, and download a PDF of the presentation over at the THINK.urban site.

GOOD Times in Portland

The recent event for GOOD Ideas for Cities happened last week in Portland, and generated some great dialogue.  I was also on one of the teams that presented.  A short recap.

:: custom notebooks by Scout Books

 "Each team was issued a challenge proposed by a local urban leader. At the event, the creative teams will present their solutions to their assigned challenge, and the urban leaders will join them onstage for a brief Q&A with GOOD Ideas for Cities editor Alissa Walker."  Teams included international talent from Wieden + Kennedy and Ziba Design, as well as local groups Sincerely Interested, THINK.urban, ADX, and the Official Manufacturing Company, all tackling some pressing (and not so pressing) urban ideas.

The event was held at Ziba's beautiful new HQ building in the Pearl District, and the sold-out event had some great people and conversations.  As you can see the packed house (including Mayor Sam Adams) is checking out Alissa from GOOD's intro, and had some great energy for the various groups.

 

:: image via Portland Mercury

My evolving side project THINK.urban, under development as a non-profit with fellow PSU Grad Students Allison Duncan and Katrina Johnston, was one of the teams, as mentioned above.  We've been slamming away on ideas for six weeks, and presented our ideas for world-class bike infrastructure, working from a challenge from Bikeportland.org's Jonathan Maus).

:: image via Portland Mercury 

As mentioned in a recap by Sarah Mirk from the Portland Mercury (check out the post for all of the ideas) - here's what we've been working on.

"CHALLENGE (from BikePortland.org editor Jonathan Maus): How can we create a major new bikeway that helps make bicycling as visible, safe, convenient, and pleasant for as many people as possible? 

IDEAS (from PSU grad student nonprofit THINK.Urban):  Take a cue from Europe and build two-way cycletracks on Portland's biggest streets. The two-way lanes would be separated from cars on streets like Sandy, Broadway, and Hawthorne, by a grassy median. "Prioritize bikes on the same level as cars. People are tired of looking at Europe. We want to see these things here now."

We were really happy with the ideas that were developed, honored to be in such great company, and looking forward to seeing this new bike infrastructure take root.  More on the ideas will be posted at THINK.urban, and I'll link them back here when they do. 

GOOD times.

Gardner Museum Fellowship

An interesting opportunity for the Gardner Museum Fellowship in Landscape Studies for 2012, which is open to a broad definition of "...an emerging design talent whose work articulates the potential for landscape as a medium of design in the public realm. This new initiative is intended to recognize and foster emerging design talent from across the design disciplines whose work embodies the potentials for landscape as a medium of public works."

Check out the all-star jury that will review applications, under the guidance of Charles Waldheim, Consulting Curator of Landscape, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Julie Bargmann, University of Virginia
Alan Berger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Anita Berrizbeitia, Harvard University
Julia Czerniak, Syracuse University
Walter Hood, University of California, Berkeley
Anuradha Mathur, University of Pennsylvania
Jane Wolff, University of Toronto

Start working today, as deadlines are due December 15th.

Pruitt Igoe Now

Another good ideas competition, Pruitt Igoe Now the infamous St. Louis housing complex that was demolished in 1972 and considered one of the touchstones in the 'death' of modernism.  The site is typical of the towers in the park ideal most notably ascribed to public housing and derived from version of Le Corbusier's Radiant City designs.  In this case, bars of housing were interwoven with roads, parking, and open space within immense superblocks as seen in the aerial and plan of the original development.

From the site: "Pruitt Igoe Now seeks the ideas of the creative community worldwide: we invite individuals and teams of professional, academic, and student architects, landscape architects, designers, writers and artists of every discipline to re-imagine the 57 acres on which the Pruitt-Igoe housing project was once located."   What could the site be today?

Part of the site has been rebuilt as a school, but a large portion is still undeveloped, and has developed its own feral ecology, as shown in these before and after shots of the demolition of building C-15 in 1972 and the same site in 2010.

Even if you aren't interested in the competition, a quick tour around the site gives a really fascinating look at some of the history of this contentious site.  Also, check out the new documentary 'The Pruitt-Igoe Myth' for some more background... here's the trailer.


The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History – Film Trailer from the Pruitt-Igoe Myth on Vimeo.

Greatest Grid

An interesting competition I am ruminating on proposing for, The Greatest Grid - from the Architectural League of New York along with the Museum of the City of New York - seeks ideas related to the grid and to reflect on the role of the grid, now 200 years old, impacts and shapes New York, and how it has and will continue to shape the city.  Some background (and more on the site):  

"On the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of the 1811 Commissioners’ Plan for New York, the foundational document that established the Manhattan street plan from Houston Street to 155th Street, the Architectural League invites architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and other design professionals to use the Manhattan street grid as a catalyst for thinking about the present and future of New York. For two centuries, the Manhattan street grid has demonstrated an astonishing flexibility to accommodate the architectural gestures and urban planning theories of successive generations of architects, urban designers, private developers, and city officials. Given its capacity for reinvention, how might the Manhattan grid continue to adapt and respond to the challenges and opportunities–both large and small–that New York faces now and into the future?"

Sort of open-ended, but the grid is such a powerful and contentious concept in both urban form (such as these studies on Planetizen here and here) and indeed the pattern of settlement for the western US.  While New York was not the first city to be 'gridded' it seems a fitting context for exploration of an idea - one that offers some interesting avenues for exploration beyond the Big Apple.  Coupled with some recent reading on Sanderson's work on Mannahatta Project - there could be some exciting potential overlaps/influences of the grid and nascent ecology of the island.

 :: image via Skyscraper Page

One of links on the competition site leads to the Wall Street Journal story on the birthday of the grid, with some collected maps worth checking out - my favorite is the sliced island by designer Nicholas Felton using the program Geocontext.

:: image via WSJ

Competition: Network Reset

An interesting new competition announced recently entitled Network Reset: Rethinking the Chicago Emerald Necklace, An international competition organized by MAS Studio & Chicago Architectural Club
which asks respondents: "...to look at the urban scale and propose a framework for the entire boulevard system as well as provide answers and visualize the interventions at a smaller scale that can directly impact its potential users. Through images, diagrams and drawings we want to know what are those soft or hard, big or small, temporary or permanent interventions that can reactivate and reset the Boulevard System of Chicago."

I'm a little perplexed by the new trend of competitions that have a 30 day turnaround between announcement and due date - as it seems to.  Still - I'm intrigued, as it seems to be an interesting problem worth pursuing.  Registration is open, and entries due February 21 - so get moving now.

Works of Landscape Urbanism?

A long-standing question that seems to have arisen in recent days due to discussions on Ecological Urbanism, coupled with a reconnection to the Landscape Urbanism bibliography.  I've also recently rescued my book collection from storage - so have an opportunity to look specifically at some of the pertinent literature to glean what we could consider a 'working list' of projects that make up a coherent body of landscape urbanism.  Is Wikipedia correct in stating that "...most of the important projects related to this theory have yet to be built, so design competitions have been an influential stage for the development of the theory." Or is there something of substance out there.

:: Parc de la Villette Entry - OMA - image via OMA

For instance, again from Wikipedia (i know not the most definitive source - but I'm greasing the skids here) lists four 'projects' in the listing for Landscape Urbanism.

• Fresh Kills Landfill Competition, Field Operations/James Corner
• Downsview Park Competition, all finalist entries
• Parc de la Villette Competition, OMA entry/Rem Koolhaas
• Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, West 8/Adriaan Geuze

:: Fresh Kills Park - Field Operations - image via Fresh Kills

Three of these are competition entries, including the unbuilt concepts for Downsview Park and the OMA/Koolhaas entry for Parc de la Villette (the built entry being that of Tschumi).  Another competition entry that is often referenced, the Field Operations/James Corner design for Fresh Kills Landfill - is a long-term implementation that is technically in process, but may be years before it is realized. Finally, a surprising entry (I think, not due to the project but that I've never heard this associated with LU before) is Schouwburgplein, a wonderfully interactive plaza in  Rotterdam by West 8/Adriann Geuze.

:: Schouwburgplein - image via West 8

So two questions:
1. What are the elements required for a work of landscape urbanism ?
(i.e. scale, context, key concepts, necessary elements, temporality, products, etc.)

2. What projects would you consider a valid work of landscape urbanism?
(as opposed to, or differentiated from a work of another discipline: architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, planning, ecology, etc.)

:: Downsview - The Digital and the Coyote - Tschumi - image via Downsview 

Again, it may be one of those conceptual culs-de-sac involving the fuzzy distinction between a priori (conceptually defined) and a posteriori knowledge (proven through experience) and trying to retroactively apply intent versus finding those projects designed using a specific theoretical approach.  In fact, I suspect that may be the case, but it's worth exploration. And, as there are folks actively designing under the guise of LU - what is the product, historical or contemporary that explains the concept in physical form?

Building Better Burbs

Check out the finalists for the Build a Better Burb competition. Not that Long Island is your typical burb, but some interesting ideas to chew on. Also available is voting on the finalists for People's Choice Award.

Sukkah City

An interesting competition and potential for installation is Sukkah City. A recent email from one of the co-organizers Joshua Foer explains the concept: "...it aims to radically reinvent the original green building: the sukkah. The sukkah is an ephemeral, elemental structure traditionally erected by Jews for one week each fall. Its ancient design constraints require that it have a roof made of shade-providing plants or trees, through which one can see the stars. Sukkah City will be a visionary village of 12 radically experimental sukkahs put up for three days this fall in Union Square Park, NYC."


:: A typical modern Sukkah - image via Beliefnet

Adding to the complexity of these interventions are a series of 'rules' that guide development, based on what amounts of ancient building codes such as "A sukkah may be built on top of a camel." or the more distinct: "A whale may be used to make a sukkah's walls. Also a living elephant." More pragmatics revolve around structural components like: "The sukkah must have at least 3 walls, but the third doesn't need to be complete. The walls must remain unshaken by a steady wind."


:: image via Sukkah City

The most intriguing element with the blending of architecture and landscape is the idea of the vegitectural roof made "...shade-providing plants or trees, through which one can see the stars." This can be interpreted in simple ways, with a covering of materials called s'chach using woven bamboo or palm leaves - keeping remaining openings for starlight viewing.


:: image via Wikipedia

The variations of course encompass the fully vegetated, such as these partially and fully vegetated varieties.


:: image via Israeli Museum Jerusalem


:: image via St. Marks Oakland

With a broadly interpreted rulebook and innate program of ephemerality, the entries should be an interesting mix - all juried by a pretty esteemed cast for determining winners. Entries are due on August 1, with installation of a dozen winning entries in in Union Square Park on September 19-21.

PICA Coop Design Competition

Based on the work from last year to create the Chicken Cube - I was recently asked to serve on a design competition jury put on by SERA Architects to design the perfect chicken coop. The competition was aimed at benefitting the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) for their upcoming TADA 2010 Annual Gala by creating an auction item. SERA donated the design time and $500 for materials and Bremik Construction agreed to donate the construction of the coop at the home of the winner of the auction.

The brief was relatively simple - consisting of either a fixed coop or a tractor (movable coop) that had the capacity to house 3 hens. The remainder of the competition was open-ended, with obviously a subtext of a marketable coop design that offered architectural aesthetics and fit within the construction budget ($500 for materials). The winning coop design 'Hen Hedge' by Gary Gola and Jeanie Lai is shown here in a refined format after being chosen as the preferred concept.

Winning Design: Hen Hedge (by Gary Gola + Jeanie Lai)

The modern box offers elegant housing for the chickens, along with a style that blends into the discerning homeowner's exterior decor. The green roof and green wall provide shading along with blending into the landscape, and the design featured the option of either tractor or fixed coop, depending on the needs of the owners. As a blend of inventive and stylistic design, this concept was the best encapsulation of concept that would meet the needs of the auction - to generate interest, and bids, for the item. In short, it was the one people would want to take home.

The coop design went through a bit of refinement after being chosen as the winner, to allow for easier constructability... seen in the images below - which will be the auction item, along with a kit of feeders, watering trough, and yes, even three little pullets to move in immediately.

The full roster of entrants ran the gamut of design concepts from the practical to the architectural - giving a range of options and ideas for housing urban flocks. A short description of the three additional entries is found below:

The Chicken Tractor (Ray Chirgwin)

An elegantly simple tractor using reclaimed materials, this small scale coop design allows for easy movement around the yard. My favorite detail was the use of small galvanized trash receptacles for nest boxes.

Lil' Deuce (Nathan Burton)

The most fully architectural of all the entries, this concept bordered more on folly than coop functionality, making for a beautiful object in the landscape. While beautiful, we felt this would have a specific stylistic appeal but require some work for functionality as a coop.

Chicken Coop de PICA Auction (Andrew Stohner)
A very real coop design, this is something you that many folks would die for in their backyards - fit, functional, and complete, with attention to many of the details of construction and function.

Thanks to Eric Phillips from SERA for the invite to the coop preliminary meetings and jury - as well as my fellow jurors Logan Cravens and Audrey Craig from SERA. For those dying for any of these designs, definitely attend TADA 2010 Annual Gala and bid high and bid often - for the design and support the regional arts community in the process.

FLOW: A Competition

Winners of the international competition „FLOW“ arrived via an email today. The european competition is: "... for students in the last two years of architecture, engineer, art, landscape, town planning, sociology and young architects were born after December 31st, 1975 in Europe."



The subject area of the competition is the City of Brussels, covering the port area and the canal in the center of the City: "This competition of ideas aims to enable participants to propose an innovative and daring architectural project which simultaneously envisages the environmental, social, technical and economic dimensions involved. The objective of the contest is to reflect on future new lifestyles and organisations, to prefigure them and to overturn mentalities, which will make it possible to provoke reflections between the private and public sector."

Student First prize: S1 Mutations
School : UNIFE (Italy) Alessandro Bellini, Jacopo Casolai

"The complexity of the problems encountered facing the competition and the dimensional matter of the canal in Brussels, encouraged us to seek out a programmatic approach. This will provide some guidelines disregarding, for the first time, the real architectural intervention.

A lot of documents and open questions involve the European Capital and specifically its 14 km canal: starting from that amount of informations and from the specific FLOW competition's requests we draw up a critical MANIFESTO in ten points. This document underline the canal's points of weakness and possible courses of actions, and suggest a method, called induced mutations, which is able to generate more and more well-framed urban transformations."

VIDEO 1 MANIFESTO from alessandro bellini on Vimeo.

Young Professional First prize: P7 The line
(Deutschland) Marine Miroux, Christoph Hager, Ingo Hüller, Demian Rudaz

La Ligne from Marine Miroux on Vimeo.

Check out all of the entries on the website. I think the idea of the videos as part of competition deliverables are a great idea - as it allows the static imagery to coalesce into a more complete narrative which aids in understanding the specifics.

Field Ops is Hot (Still)

In addition to being named on the top 10 list in Fast Company's Most Innovative Architecture Companies (the only LA on the list) and the major success of the High Line, a couple of recent wins have pushed James Corner Field Operations fully from the realm of the theoretical provocateur, to competition all-star to full-fledged big name landscape architecture project powerhouse.


:: image via LA Times

The Fast Company article included the likes of DS+R, MVRDV, Kieran Timberlake, and Santiago Caltrava, and mentioned the firms most visible work to date: "James Corner's New York-based landscape architecture firm led the design team that transformed the High Line, an abandoned elevated railway track on Manhattan's west side, into a wildly successful public park. Up next: revitalizing Philadelphia's Race Street Pier."


:: Race Street Pier - 'The Slice' - image via Plan Philly

In addition, there has been copious press related to Field Operations' design proposals for Cleveland's Public Square. As mentioned on Design Under Sky: "James Corner, of Field Operations and High Line Park fame have worked directly with two nonprofit organizations, Parkworks and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance. Corner offers three radically different designs to the square. Deemed, The Frame, The Forest, and The Thread, the concepts address traffic and circulation matters to different extremes, while all providing elements of urban park goodiness."




:: images via Design Under Sky

Two recent additions to the portfolio, spotted via World Landscape Architect, announce some more high-profile commissions for Atlanta and Santa Monica. The first includes design for the 22-mile Atlanta Beltway, which, according to The Dirt, Field Operations and "...Perkins+Will have been selected as the lead designers of the Atlanta Beltline, a 22-mile green beltway of park networks, multi-use trails and light rail, which will also reuse and revitalize old rail tracks and restore local ecosystems. "


:: image via The Dirt

The last is annoucement from the LA Times that Field Operations "...has prevailed in a high-powered design competition for a 7-acre park in the heart of the Santa Monica Civic Center". An interesting addition is the makeup of some of the teams, which included some big name architecture firms. "Of the six competitors for the park job, Field Operations was the only one without an architecture firm attached. It beat out entrants including Frank Gehry and a team made up of landscape architect Peter Walker and architect Frederick Fisher."

The trend towards high-profile park design featuring architects may begin to change as some high-profile LA firms gain the credibility to go it alone. And to show that the firm isn't doing quite everything in the US, and are maybe a bit busy with the current workload - Field Operations was conspicuously absent from the list of finalists for the St. Louis Gateway Arch Design competition, leaving room for a number of other high-profile LAs as team leads or team members.

This who's who of designers in St. Louis should produce some interesting ideas and inevitably a great concept, but I really think competitions that don't rely on great ideas submitted in anonymity - such as this one with an open qualifications process that made it easy to pick the big names - limit opportunities for any new faces to appear. It's less a competition than a high-profile RFQ.

Isn't the competition a chance for the new rising stars to shine? Instead of reinforcing the current roster of stars that get visible and notable work worldwide, how about using the competition for tapping into potential. If big firms when - they do so on merit of ideas, not just reputation. Just look what that model did for Field Operations in the first place?

Sprawl Repair Kit

I was not terribly impressed by the collective productivity of last years Reburbia competition. There were highlights, but one was left wondering what all the fuss was about - and if these short, open-ended festivities were worth the attention. One exception in terms of ideas is the Urban Sprawl Repair Kit (via Inhabitat) by Galina Tahchieva offers a toolbox for transformation of ubiquitous fast-food restaurants, strip developments and big boxes that dot the suburban landscape.


:: image via Inhabitat

The proposal "...offers a simple set of infill techniques that are every bit as practical as they are effective at eliminating suburban sprawl. Using renewable technologies and energy-efficient practices, strip centers and big-box stores can be converted into solar-powered recycling centers, restaurant parking lots become mixed-use commercial centers, and McMansions are transformed into multi-resident senior housing."

While some of the visions are less convincing (such as the gas station infill), many are brilliant in their simplicity, such as the big box strip store, which drops new building forms along the street frontage to create a more inviting storefront and a central plaza, which is a lot more appealing within and from outside than it's predecessor. It also incorporates a significant densification of suburbia by layering additional GSF into the existing footprint.


:: image via Inhabitat

Another worthy example is the fast food restaurant, which is often non-descript and surrounded by a sea of parking. The addition of a street frontage (that is double-loaded) around the perimeters provides the ability for the larger building to 'anchor' a more mixed use of buildings and provide a more desirable face to the adjacent street.


:: image via Inhabitat

While the idea of how to transform these spaces is worthy of attention, there are some more broad-based urbanist questions that need to be addressed. As a site scale, there are options, but do the larger land-use, zoning, transportation, economic, and (sub)urban forces provide the context for these to be viable solutions? As the automobile becomes less prominent, we will need these tools... the next stage is to envision the larger, and much more difficult prospect of putting into motion the underlying mechanisms to make these realistic opportunities.

Terrain Vague

Via Death by Architecture, a recent call for papers for Terrain Vague: The Interstitial as Site, Concept, Intervention features an opportunity for work to be included in: "This collection of essays will focus on terrain vague—marginal, semi-abandoned space in or along the edge of the city—as abstract concept, specific locale, and subject of literary, architectural, or otherwise artistic intervention."


:: Detroit Urban Void - image via Planetizen

Definitely a topical subject as we investigate shrinking cities and reinvention of urban uses - so a chance to provide some context, whatever you call them: urban voids, landscapes of transgression, strange places, ruined, abandoned, potentials, or terrain vague...

The deadline for abstracts is 1 June 2010.
Completed essays will be due on 1 February 2011.

From Mowing to Growing

Via BLDGBLOG, a competition announcement about one of the most intriguing competitions recently. This one investigates the ideas related to food and urban agriculture, the hot topic of the last year. One Prize is Organized by Terreform 1 with a subtheme: "From Mowing to Growing is not meant to transform each lawn into a garden, but to open us up to the possibilities of self-sustenance, organic growth, and perpetual change. In particular, we seek specific technical, urbanistic, and architectural strategies not simply for the food production required to feed the cities and suburbs, but the possibilities of diet, agriculture, and retrofitted facilities that could achieve that level within the constraints of the local climate."


:: image via BLDGBLOG

Perusing the One Prize website, it looks like another open-form (i.e. siteless) competition, which seems all the rage nowadays - allowing folks to envision a range of ideas around many themes... some listed in question format on the site include:

• How can we break the American love affair with the suburban lawn?
• Can green houses be incorporated in skyscrapers?
• What are the urban design strategies for food production in cities?
• Can food grow on rooftops, parking lots, building facades?
• What is required to remove foreclosure signs on lawns and convert them to gardens?

The jury is quite a collection, and should yield some interesting visions of answers for these questions. The real wonder for me is what the relevance of these visions will be in exploring new ways of thinking about food, agriculture, lawns, urban patterns, and economics in today's society. Many of these ideas have been tossed out in the past 12-18 months - so none of these are earth-shattering questions, and most (edible estates, vertical farming, urban agriculture, building-integrated agriculture, and vacant/ephemeral gardens) are based on older or simple ideas which have emerged and re-emerged and have become part of the overall dialogue.

I hope the competition entries will look beyond what we're already talking about in recent references and think, explore, expand, with the innate lack of competitional constraints, on the true nature and essence of these questions - not just with eye-popping visuals or new terms applied to the old... should be fun.

WPA Video: Local Code / Real Estates

I managed to butcher the announcement of the WPA 2.0 finalists a few weeks back... (which should be up to date now)... and was made aware of it thanks to Ben Golder, one of the team members from the Local Code team. He recently sent me this link to a video of their project. I will post some more when they are available, but for now enjoy this one.

WPA2 : Local Code / Real Estates from Nicholas de Monchaux on Vimeo.

WPA 2.0 Student Finalists

As a follow-up to the previous post, the student award finalists were announced as well, including a few of the notables images from some of the entries.

“R_Ignite” was designed by four graduate students of the Manchester School of Architecture – Peter Millar, Jamie Potter, Andy Wilde and Stuart Wheeler. This proposal revitalizes port cities and greens the shipwrecking industry through the addition of recycling and social activities."


:: image via Bustler

“Aquaculture Canal_New Orleans,” by Fadi Masoud, a Landscape Architecture student at the University of Toronto, envisions the New Orleans’ Industrial Canal as productive infrastructure for flood control and aquaculture. The jury noted that the winning submissions were ideal as a pair, representing the range of innovative ideas relevant to WPA 2.0."


:: image via Bustler

Additional finalists included:

St Viaduct: Polytechnic HighSchool & Transportation Center; Studio Three - Douglas Segulja - Parsons School of Constructed Environments

Fluctuating Freeway Ecologies; The Crop - Gary Garcia . Marc Yeber . Iris Tsai . Xiaoye Zhang - USC School of Architecture

urban ConAgraculture; Dale Luebbert - University of Nebraska

Cash for Clunkers = Bike Sharing for Chicago; M-Squared - Matt Moore IIT

Topographic Infrastructure: Hollywood Freeway Central Park; YMeng; Meng Yang; USC School of Architecture

Just the names themselves sound intriguing, and there will undoubtedly be some additional images of the rest of the student winners down the line a bit, so stay tuned. Amazing work and great to see the interdisciplinary nature of infrastructure realized with a mix of architecture and landscape architecture student's getting honored. I hope to follow up with some thoughts (beyond this simple rehashing on the words and images) in due time.

WPA 2.0 Winners

[post corrected on 12.13.09]

I have been remiss in posting about the WPA 2.0 competition beyond this initial post way back when... it's been exciting to see both the professional and student awards coming together into a fabulous compilation on information on the reinvention of public infrastructure. So alas, it was time to capture at least a portion of the great ideas that came from the submittals.



Carbon T.A.P // Tunnel Algae Park
The grand prize winner of the competition was: "... the brainchild of PORT architects Andrew Moddrell and Christopher Marcinkoski of Chicago and New York. The proposal uses algae pontoons to capture mobile-source carbon-dioxide emissions along New York City’s transportation arteries and employ them in bio-fuel production, creating an urban park with structured wetlands, aquatic and avian habitat, recreation amenities, as well as high speed bike lanes and public promenades. The jury... was unanimous in its decision, citing two primary qualities: The floating, carbon-capturing bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan would be a visible marker for the tunnel hidden below, and the periodic rotation of the parkway across the river had the power to reshape the image of the city."




:: images via Bustler

There is also a video of the winner here:



The remainder of the finalists are captured on the WPA site (provided by competition sponsor cityLAB), from this post on Bustler. The other five finalist entries are found below:

HYDRO-GENIC CITY, 2020
"Through the development of integrated, ecologically sensitive, and aesthetically compelling architecture, this proposal seeks to turn the often mechanistic infrastructural system of LA - in this case, the waterworks - into an interactive and sensory series of public nodes. As mist platforms/light rail stations, urban beaches, energy producing water treatment plants, solar-panel encased water towers, pools, and aquatic parking lots, these water-based landscapes become organizational moments for community building."




:: images via Bustler

Local Code / Real Estates
"Tapping into the Department of Public Works catalogue of San Francisco's "unaccepted streets" (those no longer maintained by the city and hence neglected and often impassable), this proposal utilizes various computer models and statistical data to determine and propose new public, park-based uses for these interstitial spaces. Over 1600 of these sites are available, a selection of which are analyzed for the proposal in terms of elevation and topography, microclimate, soil type, hydrology, population density and demographics, economics, crime, and existing networks to determine the most parametrically appropriate transformation of use."




:: images via Bustler

Coupling Infrastructures: Water Economies/Ecologies
"This proposal focuses on America’s impending water crisis, particularly in cities in the southwest where growth is high and water availability is limited, by rethinking water use, distribution, and storage. Using the Salton Sea as a model site, the proposal envisions “converting the Sea back to its recreational use while allowing multiple economic opportunities for the production of water, salt, and more efficient greenhouses.” Here “infrastructure [becomes] an extension of nature.” Island pods provide for salt harvesting, recreation, and new animal habitats."




:: images via Bustler

Border Wall as Infrastructure
“[T]here exists far more potential in a construction project that is estimated to cost up to $1,325.75 per linear foot.” Recognizing the high cost, limited effectiveness and unintended natural consequences of the new, multi-layered US/Mexico border wall (disruption of animal habitats, diversion of water runoff that has caused new flooding in nearby towns), this proposal names 30 alternatives (covering nearly the whole of the Mexican alphabet, literally from Aqueduct wall to Zen wall) that might better combat the energy crisis, risk of death from dehydration, disruption of animal habitat, loss of vegetation, negative labor relations, missing creative vision and lack of cross-cultural appreciation likely in the government sponsored version."




:: images via Bustler

1,000,000,000 Global Water Refugees
"Combining the rust belts’ loss of population with its abundance of fresh water, this proposal outlines a strategy for redensification of under-utilized post-industrial landscapes (parts of Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland) by relocating populations threatened by water scarcity."




:: images via Bustler