Beyond the Park Avenue CenterlineSponsor: Fisher Brothers
Type: Open, United States
Location: New York City
Eligibility: Open competition, but entrants must be US citizens.
Fee: None
Awards: A grand prize winner selected by a jury will receive $25,000 and a popular vote will determine a $5,000 prize winner.
Timetable:
15 December 2017 – Entry form deadline
2 February 2018 – Design proposal submission deadline
23 February 2018 – Selected participants notified Jury:
• Vishaan Chakrabarti, Founder, PAU and Professor, Columbia University
• Winston Fisher, Partner, Fisher Brothers
• Jon Kessler, Artist and Professor, Columbia University’s School of the Arts
• Signe Nielsen, Principal, Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects
• David Rockwell, Founder and President, Rockwell Group
• Samantha Rudin, Senior Vice President, Rudin Management
• Michael Speaks, PH.D., Dean of The School of Architecture and Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University Design Challenge: Park Avenue, one of the world’s premiere thoroughfares, is traditionally known for its tall buildings that are home to Fortune 500 companies. The medians of Park Avenue, or the “centerlines,” are traditionally characterized by plantings and periodic sculpture installations. Park Avenue medians represent a traditional element of New York City but also provide an opportunity for reinvention. Other areas of New York City, such as the High Line, have successfully transformed into an exciting destination for city dwellers and visitors alike. Fisher Brothers is pleased to sponsor a $30,000 privately-funded design competition using the Park Avenue medians (between 46th – 57th Streets) as a canvas for collecting visionary design proposals with the potential to enliven Park Avenue’s commercial district. The goal of this competition is to foster creativity and challenge participants to think outside the box; to propose exciting ideas that have never been considered possible for the medians; and to reimagine the existing urban landscape. We want ideas that bring Park Avenue into the 21st century. Fisher Brothers urges competition participants to think “beyond the centerline,” using the medians as a blank canvas for creative ideas to engage the community and reimagine Park Avenue. Designs should be considered a seed that when planted will completely change the dynamic of the Park Avenue centerline and the Midtown East neighborhood. We encourage you to conceptualize this project in any way that inspires you and the parameters remain broad to allow for maximum creativity. Up to 10 competitors selected by an esteemed jury will be invited to publicly display their designs at Park Avenue Plaza, a building prominently located on Park Avenue and 52nd Street, in February 2018. For more information, go to: www.FBDesignCom.com |
An Ideas Competition in Berlin Seeks Answers 
Winning entry perspective Image: ©AllesWirdGut Architekten
Berlin developer HOWOGE recently staged what was regarded as a “planning Laboratory” competition for a model satellite in northwest Berlin. The brief for this invited competition noted that the urban sprawl, which had accompanied the reunification of Germany(and Berlin) in 1989, was low density in character, occupying wide swaths of suburban areas around the city. With previous high density, and now controversial Berlin projects in mind—the problems with Berlin’s high-density Gropius-Stadt as a warning signal—the sponsor here suggested that lessons learned from past mistakes could be avoided with a high-quality design strategy… Read more… Winner Announced for New Preston Mosque Competition
LUCA POIAN FORMS Image courtesy RIBA
Facilitator: RIBA
Location: Preston, U.K.
Type: International, open
The competition attracted over 200 entries from 40 different countries.
Five finalists were chosen to participate in a second phase:
Winner
• LUCA POIAN FORMS, London, UK
Finalists - BLANKPAGE Architects, Lebanon
- Borough Architects + buchhandler-nelli + elca, Cambridge, UK
- Mcheileh Studio, New York (Highly Commended by the Evaluation Panel)
- TABE SHOURI, New York
RIBA competition website:
www.architecture.com/competitions Young Architects in Competitions 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. Download Young Architects in Competitions for free at the following link: https://crc.umontreal.ca/en/publications-libre-acces/ Astrakhan Looks to Raise Its Quality of Life Index
Aerial view of downtown Astrakhan
Planning competitions with a strong landscape component take many forms, including some for plazas and gateways to major town centers, city neighborhood sites with multi-story housing units, university campus plans and finally, comprehensive city plans—the latter either being for new towns, as in China, or strategies for the improvement of existing cities—as was here the case with Astrakhan, a major city on the Volga delta, and the Caspian Sea. Read more…
Image: ©wHY Architecture
Earlier this year, an article in the Architects’ Journal described what almost sounded like a death knell for wHY Architecture’s winning competition design for Edinburgh’s Ross Pavilion site. When the competition took place, some observers may have regarded wHY as a wild card, in the company of such high-profile firms as BIG and David Adjaye,* There can be no question that they understood the site and program better than their rivals, and it would have appeared that innovation had won the day. Their design could have served to rethink the way in which this site, with its replacement of an outdated bandstand by a contemporary structure, would serve as a destination for Scotland’s public—much as has been the case for Frank Gehry’s pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Read more… SWA/Balsley Wins Paveletskaya Plaza Landscape Competition
Aerial view at night – courtesy SWA/Balsley 5+ Design
Of the nine railway stations in Moscow, Paveletskaya is the largest and one of the last of those that opened around the turn of the century. Compared to other Moscow stations, Paveletskaya, designed by Alexander Krasovsky and opened in 1900, represented a lower-key presence in its sprawling configuration, similar to palaces such as a Sans Souci without the ornamentation. The original site for the recent competition included a small park facing the station, bordered on one side by the Ring Road. Post WWII, the site was bifurcated by a road, thus separating the front entrance of the station from the grassy area facing it. Read more… |
