Louisville Children’s Museum Competition: Revitalizing a Downtown Edge
Sponsor: AIA, Central Kentucky Chapter; CSI, Louisville Chapter
Competition Manager: The Competition Project
Location: Louisville, Kentucky
Languages: English
Type: Open, international, ideas
Eligiblity: The competition is open to design professionals and students currently registered in accredited schools of architecture programs in their country of residence in the areas of architecture, landscape architecture, engineering and planning. Teams including all or part of the above are welcome. Student teams should included no more than six(6) members. Students are required to validate residence in a institutional program in any of the above upon registration. As jury members are not local, and the process is anonymous, AIA and CSI members belonging to the local chapters may enter.
Registration and Submission Deadline: 10 February 2014
Fee: Professionals – $75
Student teams – $60
Individual students – $30
Awards:
First Prize – $6000
Second Prize – $3000
Third Prize – $1000
Honorable Mentions (3)
Jury:
Sylvia Smith, FAIA, Senior Partner, FxFowle Architects, New York office
Michael Speaks, Dean, School of Architecture, Syracuse University
Susan Szenasy, Editor, METROPOLIS magazine, New York
Carol Drucker, Principal, Drucker Zajdel Structural Engineers (DZSE), Naperville, Illinois
Leigh Breslau, AIA, Partner, Trahan Architects / Chicago Studio
Marc L’Italien, FAIA, Partner, EHDD, San Francisco
Design Challenge:
Designing a Louisville Children’s Museum, Revitalizing a Downtown Edge, is an international ideas competition sponsored by the local chapters of the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Louisville is one of the few cities of its size without a museum dedicated specifically to children between the ages of 2-13, and this museum is to be considered as a model to fill that vacuum.
The choice of this site for the competition is intended to address the following issues: • Located next to the city’s main public library, the museum could draw on the large numbers of children accompanied by their parents visiting the library. • Until now, most of the development and investment in the city has been concentrated in the downtown area bordering the Ohio River. More recently, the City of Louisville has begun to target the area at the edge of the downtown core for revitalization, starting with Broadway, and extending south to Old Louisville. Although the area does include some important institutions, such as Spalding University, Bridgehaven Mental Health Services, numerous churches and housing for the elderly, it lacks in density and urban activity. By implementing a strong program at the edge, with the Children’s Museum as an iconic arrival factor, and the addition of important design elements across Second Street to fill two gaps now used as parking lots, this project could be an important building block for neighborhood revitalization, over and beyond the targeted site. Bringing more traffic to the site should eventually result in more retail and commercial ammenties.
The competition, open to both professionals and students, will seek innovative ideas, both in the programmatic organization of the museum itself, as well as in the building’s architectural expression. In addition, circulation throughout the entire site and the museum’s relationship to its neighbor, i.e., the main library and the other designated buildings in the program, is essential.
When Competitions and a New Generation of Ideas Elevate Architectural Quality
by Jean-Pierre Chupin and G. Stanley Collyer published by Potential Architecture Books, Montreal, Canada 2020 271 illustrations in color and black & white Available in PDF and eBook formats ISBN 9781988962047
What do the Vietnam Memorial, the St. Louis Arch, and the Sydney Opera House have in common? These world renowned landmarks were all designed by architects under the age of 40, and in each case they were selected through open competitions. At their best, design competitions can provide a singular opportunity for young and unknown architects to make their mark on the built environment and launch productive, fruitful careers. But what happens when design competitions are engineered to favor the established and experienced practitioners from the very outset?
This comprehensive new book written by Jean-Pierre Chupin (Canadian Competitions Catalogue) and Stanley Collyer (COMPETITIONS) highlights for the crucial role competitions have played in fostering the careers of young architects, and makes an argument against the trend of invited competitions and RFQs. The authors take an in-depth look at past competitions won by young architects and planners, and survey the state of competitions through the world on a region by region basis. The end result is a compelling argument for an inclusive approach to conducting international design competitions.
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In early 2020, a group advocating a new approach to the design of the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA)—The Citizens’ Brigade to Save LACMA—organized a competition to counter an existing design by the Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor. Already commissioned by the LACMA administration, the project is slated to begin almost immediately with the demolition of four LACMA buildings—three existing and one new. Moreover, the existing plan to incorporate all of the existing collections under one roof isn’t covered by the Zumthor plan. This obvious lack of exhibit space was the focus of a query by the Ahmanson Foundation, a major donor of artworks to LACMA in the past. Upon not receiving assurances from LACMA that those donated works would be exhibited, but possibly held in storage and hidden from public view, the Foundation cut all ties with LACMA. Finally, the plan by Zumthor foresees the new structure not only occupying much of the new space created by demolition, but extends part of the new building over Wiltshire Boulevard. As one might anticipate from Zumthor, the construction of the structure is also primarily of concrete, thereby raising the cost per SF. So no matter how highly finished this material turns out to be, it does in essence represent a brutalist structure replacing an eclectic ensemble.
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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.
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