Dawntown 08 Waterworks

Sponsors: Danwtown, City Of Miami, Miami DDA, University Of Miami, Florida International University
Type: Open, international
Entry fee: none
Awards: $14,000 total ($8,000; 4,000; 2,000)
Jury
• Terry Riley, Director, Miami Art Museum
• Alex Wall, Professor of Urban Design, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
• Loretta Cockrum, CEO, Foram Group
• Cathy Leff, Director, The Wolfsonian-FIU
• Raymond Jungles, Landscape Architect
Timetable
7 November 2008 – Registration deadline
21 November 2008 – Submission deadline
Design Challenge:
DawnTown 2008: Waterworks invites designers, students, architects, landscape architects, and artists worldwide to generate innovative design proposals for a project that will contribute to the 21st century vision for Downtown Miami. Entrants are directed to redesign an existing infrastructure element at the edge of waterfront Bicentennial Park and the renovated Biscayne Blvd in Downtown Miami, and transform it into a public icon of the new Downtown.
The particular infrastructure element is the pump station operated by the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department. The pump station was built in 1951 on one of the old port piers. The concrete, windowless, flat-roofed building is currently an unsightly structure hiding the important environmental functions contained within. Chain-link fence separates the pump station from its surroundings, thus it does not interact either with the park around it or with Biscayne Boulevard that it faces.
The City has plans to transform Bicentennial Park into Museum Park, and has budgeted a substantial sum to do so. As a result, DawnTown 2008: Waterworks has the potential to inspire what happens to the pump station as part of the park’s transformation. Miami Mayor Manny Diaz is supportive of the competition and topic.
Competitors are asked to rethink the envelope of the pump station symbolically, cosmetically, and functionally. A new enclosure shall be designed to ‘re-wrap’ the existing structure, make it more attractive and better-integrated with the redesigned boulevard and the master plan for the future Bicentennial Park, to be renamed Museum Park, by Cooper Robertson. The pump equipment shall remain completely functional, and access to it by service vehicles must be maintained along the south and east sides.
Competitors should take into account the two important neighbors that will be built within the next five years in Museum Park: the proposed new Miami Art Museum designed by Herzog & De Meuron and the proposed new Science Museum designed by Nicholas Grimshaw Architects.
For information, go to: www.dawntown.org