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.
Master plans have been around for ages; but master plans for very large cities with all their support systems are relatively new. Milton Keynes (MK), located in Buckinghamshire in southern England, and begun in the late 1960s, is one of the most successful of the new cities, now having a population of almost 250,000. Its success lies mainly on the lessons learned from the establishment of the planning which generated the new towns in the U.K. during the 1940s and 50s, many of which have not fared well in the test of time. MK’s success was based primarily on the careful separation of high density from residential where the influence of the “garden city” could be seen. Here the idea of a live/work environment was even incorporated.
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 updating and modernization of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport has been well overdue. Aside from occasional problems caused by Chicago’s winter storms, congestion at the airport has led air travelers to avoid the airport when catching a connecting flight is on the agenda. So Chicago, noted for its modern architecture and the home of several high-profile architecture firms, decided to turn to an invited competition for a solution to these issues.
Competitions in Chicago in the recent past have been anything but encouraging, especially when transparency is an issue. During the competition for the Obama Center on the South Side, the Obama Foundation, which was responsible for the administration of that “competition,” was anything but a model of transparency; and to this day, none of the finalist designs, other than that of the winner, have seen the light of day. In the case of the O’Hare project, videos submitted by the five finalists teams were on public display, and the public was even asked to vote for their favorite.
In these times when political emotions run high and gun violence is the norm, not the exception; and when emotions no longer are held in check, but encouraged by our leaders, minorities become easy targets for those who adhere to ideologies based primarily on exclusivity and hate.
The LGBT community has long been the target of various segments of our society; but the massacre that took place at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a favorite hangout for gays, elevated this phenomenon to a new level. After an event that claimed the lives of 49 victims, injured 68 others, and left hundreds permanently traumatized, it should come as no surprise that a memorial to this tragedy has been front and center in the minds of the community ever since. Because the very nature of this event has drawn nationwide attention, the community wanted to get it right. So it was only logical that they would turn to a competition as the most viable vehicle for arriving at a solution for the design of a memorial, as well as a museum. For this, the onePULSE Foundation was formed, to memorialize this tragedy and “ensure that Pulse”s legacy of love, acceptance and hope will never be lost.”
As part of a policy to relocate archives of local interest outside of major Bavarian cities, a competition was staged for the design of a new archive in Kitzingen, 12 miles from the provincial capital city of Würzburg, Germany. The competition was open to qualified teams in the EU, with 25 firms identified to take part in a competition. Since five firms were preinvited, 20 openings were available for the 79 applicants that vied for participation in the competition. In the end, 23 firms submitted designs for the final adjudication process.
In July 2019 the Vilnius Concert Hall competition jury began its deliberations to identify a suitable design for this major performing arts project. As one might have anticipated, two of thejurors on the seven member panel, Ole Gustavsen (Snohetta) and Andreas Cukrowicz (Nachbaur Architekten) had won high profile competitions for similar music center projects—in Oslo and Munich.The jury was confronted with a formidable task, as the competition, organized according to UIA regulations and anonymous in its format, had attracted 248 entries from around the world. For this one-stage competition, the organizers listed the following evaluation criteria, whereby the order of the criteria was not to reflect any priority:
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