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/
Aerial view of site – Courtesy National Finnish Museum
When major cultural institutions in Finland plan a new building project, one can almost always assume that an open competition will be the vehicle by which the client settles on the building’s design. The only question is, will this be organized in a format open to local, Scandinavian, or international architects. In the case of the National Museum of Finland annex competition, it was open to architects throughout the world — resulting in 185 entries.
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The Opening of Taichung’s Central Park by Catherine Mosbach/Philippe Rahm
 View from the south with downtown Taichung in the distance image: ©Mosbach/Rahm
The abandonment and closing of airports, including decommissioning those that were used for military purposes, has presented design communities with several opportunities to convert them entirely to civilian purposes. Notable among those which have been the result of competitions are Orange County Great Park, Irvine, California (Ken Smith Landscape Architects), The Estonian National Museum (Dan Dorell, Lina Ghotmeh and Tsuyoshi Tane), and Toronto’s less successful Downsview Park competition, whereby the winning design by OMA, with trees as the primary feature, has been basically ignored. Instead, the area has become the site of numerous commercial and residential projects.
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SMAR’s Winning Entry Gets the Green Light
Image: ©SMAR Architecture
The winning competition entry in the 2016 Science Island competition in Kaunas, Lithuania by SMAR Architects may only take five years to realize—from the date of the competition to completion. This is encouraging news, as the duration of such projects resulting from a competition can often take much longer—sometimes up to 8-10 years.
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Night view of the memorial tapestry from Independence Avenue, with Gehry’s sketch of the Normandy cliffs.
Explaining the contributions of a World War II hero and later President of the United States on a very modest site on Independence Avenue just off the Washington Mall is tantamount to asking an author to describe the life of this person in no more than one paragraph. But on September 17th, after a long and bumpy journey, lasting almost 20 years and navigating a warren of the DC approval processes and public scrutiny, the Eisenhower Memorial finally was dedicated and opened to the public. Designed by Frank Gehry, it has received mixed reviews, the majority being more positive. But most have pointed out that the memorial is more impressive at night than in full daylight. This is due primarily to the illumination of an almost block-long metallic tapestry—featuring a sketch by Gehry, which depicts his interpretation of the cliffs of the Normandy coastline where the Americans landed on D-Day.
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Professional winner: Brooklyn Bridge Forest (image © Pilot Projects Design Collective)
While looking for new adventures on a visit to New York City, friends suggested that I take time to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge—certainly a New York icon. For those intending to undertake this trek across the bridge for the first time, the bridge consists of layers, with a large platform for pedestrians on top of a lower level for cars and the metro system. Traversing this connection for the first time between Manhattan and Brooklyn is not just about getting from one place to another, but experiencing a great scenic view of both boroughs and occasionally interacting with other bridge crossers. As for the latter, they provide a flavor of the city’s demographics, as opposed to similar experiences one might have of the city’s inhabitants when riding the city’s subway system.
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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. 
