In 2006, Singapore staged a competition for a new park on the bay spanning 250 acres. At the edge of the city’s downtown, it was intended to become Singapore’s premier urban outdoor recreation space and a national icon. In essence, what the client was looking for was a botanical garden with an element of adventure added to the mix.
The competition attracted more than 70 entries from 170 firms.
The initial shortlisted firms were:
Ah’bé Landscape Architects (USA)
Alsop Design Ltd (UK)
EDAW Australia Pty Ltd (Australia)
Field Operations (USA) in collaboration with Foster & Partners (UK)
Grant Associates (UK) in collaboration with Atelier One (UK), Land Design Studios (UK), and Wilkinson Eyre Architects (UK)
Gustafson Porter Ltd (UK)
Office For Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) (The Netherlands)
Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop (Japan)
Sasaki Associates, Inc. (USA)
WIN Landscape Planning & Design Pte Ltd (Japan)
From these Grant Associates and Gustafson Porter were eventually awarded the master plan design for the Bay South and Bay East Gardens respectively. The first phase of the Bay East Gardens opened to the public in October 2011. Featured were a series of leaf-shaped gardens, each with its own specific landscaping design. Wind and water have been introduced into the site to provide a cooling effect.
The largest of the three Gardens, Bay South Garden, opened to the public in June 2012. Due to the inclusion of some significant structural objects, Grant Associates brought Wilkinson Eyre and structural engineers, Atelier 10, onto their team. The result has been nothing less than sensational. The team enhanced the garden experience with “Supertrees,” 25 to 50 meters in height, as well as two conservatory buildings. The Supertrees provide shade in the day and come alive with a display of light and soundat night. In addition, over 160 plants comprising more than 200 species adorn many of the Supertrees at the top of the canopy. To top it all off, one can enjoy the surrounding view from a café atop the highest Supertree.
There will always be speculation as to the origin of some designs. Could it be that Marks Barfield’s design for the 2010 English pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 Expo owed something to the Supertrees design?
Since the Gardens are being developed in phases, one wonders if there are more surprises like this around the corner. If so, this could well be this decades answer to the Bilbao effect, except that here the subject is a park setting If we use the sculpture park as a point of departure, this has taken the idea of a public garden to a whole new level.
Olha Romaniuk, who received her M Arch degree from the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Art, Architecture, and Planning, and a former intern with COMPETITIONS, is presently with Gallagher and Associates’ office in Singapore.
The Rise in the City Housing Competition in the African country of Lesotho presented many similarities with student competitions that have occurred over the past decades, the main link being the presence of mentors as advisers to the team(s) who were designing the entries. One of the most famous examples of this was the winning design for the Vietnam Memorial Competition by Maya Lin, who was enrolled at the time in a studio course at Yale University. In that case it was also a case of students competing against professionals. Lin’s design just happened to find favor with the jury.
Form and Dichroic Light Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University Michelle LaFoe and Isaac Campbell OFFICE 52 Architecture Forward by Cesar Pelli, FAIA Introduction by Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA Leete”s Island Books, Maine USA Hard cover; 96 pages in color ISBN 9780918172709
In his introduction to Form and Dichroic LIght, Michael Crosbie never mentions the term, “wild card,” to describe Office 52’s participation in the invited competition for the Carnegie Mellon Engineering Building. The four finalists, picked from a list of 17 firms, also included three household names: ZGF, Wilson, and BCJ (Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson). So what possible chance could a firm, which had just recently opened a small office in Portland, Oregon, have against a competition lineup of this magnitude? But as OFFICE 52 Principal, Isaac Campbell explained, as a small firm, “we were quite nimble,” and the $50,000 stipend the firms all received to produce a design could allow OFFICE 52 more time to undertake the research involved than might be the case with a larger office, where a cost controller is constantly focusing on the operation.
The features of a truly international competition were quite in evidence in Prague's SMÍCHOV School search for an ideal elementary school design: the event attracted 66 entries from around the world, and the winners were a team from Canada and Poland. The sponsors went so far as to even estimate the number of hours spent by all of the architects who submitted entries for the competition (58,800). One can only imagine what that number might have been for the Helsinki Guggenheim competition, which attracted 1,715 entries.
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects (PCP) in collaboration with China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Corp Ltd. has prevailed over a strong field to win the competition for a Natural History Museum in Chengdu, China. The other finalists included Zaha Hadid Architects, Sutherland Hussey Harris, Nihon Sekkei, Valode & Pistre, and FUKSAS.
Garage Screen, a program of film screenings on contemporary art and culture, was launched in 2012 and introduces viewers to notable examples of Russian and foreign feature films, documentaries, and experimental films. Since its inception, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has selected and shown films and videos examining issues of contemporary art and culture in all their manifestations, rare documentary films on the lives and lifestyles of prominent and little-known artists, musicians, architects, and performing artists, as well as films about the creation of exhibitions and works of art.
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