Eligibility: The competition has two categories: “Professionals,” for teams 22 years of age and above, and “Young Adults,” for teams 21 years of age and under.
Three finalists from each category will be selected by an interdisciplinary jury representing a wide-ranging set of perspectives on the Brooklyn Bridge. Timetable
April 5, 2020: Proposals due by 11:59 pm ET
Early May 2020: Finalists announced
Mid-May 2020: Finalists kick-off event
May–July 2020: Proposal development
Mid-July 2020: Public jury session
Late July 2020: Winners announced
Process and Awards: All finalists will have two months to refine their design based on feedback from the competition’s jury. In recognition of their work, finalists in the “Professionals” category will receive $13,000 and finalists in the “Young Adults” category will receive $3,000.
Jury members include:
Peg Breen;President, New York Landmarks Conservancy
Andrew Brown;Associate Director of Research, Van Alen Institute
Marla Gayle;Managing Director, SOM
Jonathan Gardenhire;Artist and Former VP, Alfred E. Smith Resident Association Executive Board
Danny Harris;Executive Director, Transportation Alternatives
Helen Ho;Principal, Karp Strategies
Isabella Joseph;Student, Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York
Regina Myer;President, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
Amy Plitt;Editor, Curbed NY
Design Challenge:
“The Brooklyn Bridge has been perhaps New York City’s most iconic structure for 137 years. Not only is it a must-see tourist attraction, this beautiful bridge is relied upon by thousands of New Yorkers who cross between Brooklyn and Manhattan each day—many of them by foot or bike,” said NYC DOT Chief Operations Officer Margaret Forgione. “As we undertake our own engineering inspection this year to help assess the capacity for changes to the promenade, we welcome new and innovative ideas on how to reimagine the Brooklyn Bridge Promenade to create more space for pedestrians and cyclists.”
Arguably New York’s most recognizable landmark, the Brooklyn Bridge holds a special place in our collective imagination. But that iconic status comes at a cost. At peak hours, the promenade is crammed, uncomfortable, and sometimes unsafe. Thousands of pedestrians and cyclists cross the bridge every day.
With New York’s growing numbers of cyclists and pedestrians, it is imperative to provide modern infrastructure that allows them to move comfortably and safely around the city. And in recent years, city officials have responded, adding protected bike lanes, widening sidewalks, building pedestrian plazas, and providing new bike and pedestrian space on some bridges around the city. But the Brooklyn Bridge, perhaps the city’s most crucial interborough connection for pedestrians and cyclists, remains woefully incapable of accommodating the demands of its users. Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge aims to inspire the public to envision the infrastructure that will shape New York City’s future, support the transit needs of a 21st century city, and set a new standard for how we think about aging transportation infrastructure across the city.
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.
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.
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:
Memorials to commemorate atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II have taken many forms. Holocaust museums such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. by Pei Cobb Freed or the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Daniel Libeskind, all endeavor to paint a broad picture, including narratives covering most of the major events and sites. Former concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Theresienstadt and Buchenwald have been frequent tour destinations. In the case of Buchenwald, the local city of Weimar has placed pictures of “Witnesses” throughout the downtown area as a reminder of the Nazi legacy.
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