Bios
As Managing Director of Busby Perkins+Will, Peter is involved in the design and sustainable direction of each project the firm engages. Overseeing design offices in Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington, and now San Francisco, Peter directs more than 100 employees working on projects across Canada, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. As a director of Perkins+Will since 2004, Peter has expanded his role to include sustainable design leadership to the firm’s 23 offices worldwide; and Perkins+Will has been recognized internationally as the leader in sustainable building design, having the largest portfolio of built green projects in North America.
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Jeanne Gang, founder of Studio Gang, a leading Chicago-based architecture firm, received her B. Arch degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana in 1986. After obtaining a M.Arch degree from Harvard's GSD and a fellowship to the ETH in Zürich, she spent two years with the Office of Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, then with Booth/Hansen Associates in Chicago. After the founding of Studio Gang Architects in 1997, the firm received several commissions, including the Starlight Theater in Rockford, Illinois. The firm later won two national competitions, The Ford Calumet Environmental Center and the Hoboken (NJ) 9/11 Memorial Competition. Later she was the runnerup finalist in the Taipei Pop Music Center Competition, Taiwan. A MacArthur genius grant is among the various awards she has received.
Photo: ©Dane Tashima  Craig Hartman joined Skidmore Owings and Merrill immediately after receiving his B.Arch from the new Ball State architecture program in Muncie, Indiana. At SOM he was mentored by Principal, Walter Netsch, who became a life-long friend. By 1985 he became a design partner at SOM's Houston office, then Partner-in-Charge at SOM's Washington office two years later. There he collaborated with Charles Correa and Nikken Sekkei on the Second Place entry to the World Bank competition.
Shortly thereafter he moved to SOM's West Coast region in San Francisco as Partner-in-Charge. In 1993 he won the San Francisco International Terminal Competition, which was completed in 2000.
SOM's San Francisco office became very active in China, winning competitions for two large projects in 1993 and 1994. That same year, SOM won the extension competition for the California State Office Building in San Francisco. Led by Craig, SOM prevailed over four other high-profile firms in an invited 2001 competition for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing—which opened in 2008.
In neighboring Oakland, SOM was invited as the only U.S.-based firm to participate in the Christ the Light Cathedral competition, where they were again up against stiff competition, Santiago Calatrava among others. After winning the competition, the site was changed to a new location, but the result drew wide-spread acclaim upon the building's dedication in 2009.
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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/
Jensen Architects – Winning entry (Honor Award)
Beginning in 2011, Architecture at Zero, a collaboration between the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and the California chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIACA), was established to investigate the role architecture might play in reducing energy consumption in the built environment. Since then, every year has seen a new site and building type selected as a design challenge in what has become one of the world’s most interesting international competitions.
As a sign of its mounting popularity, the competition received 237 registrations from 49 countries and, according to the professional adviser, about 150 entries— all this during the Covid-19 virus pandemic, when all were compelled to work from home.
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An Ideas Competition in Opposition to a Concrete Design
Entry by TheeAe (Image © TheeAe)
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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National Railway Museum Central Hall (U.K.)
Winning entry by Feilden Fowles (image © Fielden Fowles)
If one were to search for a railway museum in the U.K., London would seem to be an obvious choice. But, as it happens, its location is in the northeastern city of York, far from the major cultural and economic centers of the country. But despite its distance from the major metropolitan areas to the south and west, York has managed to become the focal point of research into the history of rail in the U.K., supplemented by a major museum. Here we are not just talking about some posters, but sheds replete with a large collection of vintage trains.
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View to winning entry ©KDA
Foundation non-profits are no strangers to good architecture. Ford Foundation’s forward-looking headquarters in New York City by Roche Dinkeloo was an early example of a non-profit using architecture as a vehicle for serving to brand it as a progressive institution. In 2001 the California Endowment went one step further, staging an invited competition for their new headquarters in Los Angeles.
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Winning entry by Cui Kai (© Cui Kai)
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.
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Craig Hartman joined Skidmore Owings and Merrill immediately after receiving his B.Arch from the new Ball State architecture program in Muncie, Indiana. At SOM he was mentored by Principal, Walter Netsch, who became a life-long friend. By 1985 he became a design partner at SOM's Houston office, then Partner-in-Charge at SOM's Washington office two years later. There he collaborated with Charles Correa and Nikken Sekkei on the Second Place entry to the World Bank competition. 
