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The O’Hare International Airport Competition
Winning entry – Studio-ORD
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.
Reconstituting an Abandoned Rail Line
Aerial view: courtesy WNYC
The Rails to Trails program, which gained momentum after the1984 Federal Land Banking Law—supported by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy—has seen over 24,000 miles of trails established where rail lines once existed. Some sites were strictly urban, while others, sometimes 
When one thinks of infrastructure, it’s usually about roads, rails, bridges, airports, canals, pipelines, and any- and everything about getting from one place to another. But leave it to the Steedman competition to stimulate designers to view things from a different point of view.
In the 2016/17 Steedman competition, won by Pedro Pitarch of Spain, the winner explored the theme, “Adaptation,” and convinced the jury with his proposal, Disguised Metropolitanisms: Unveiling the Masquerade of Urban Domesticity. Pitarch’s point of departure? “There has been a migration from the right of property to the right of access and use,” argued Pedro Pitarch. “Spaces are no longer used according to their architectural program, but according to their protocols, their accessibility, and their possibilities of empowerment.”
Winning design © Gottlieb Paludan Architects with Strasky, Husty and Partners
The U.K. is no stranger to pedestrian bridge competitions. Both the Salford Pedestrian Bridge competition (2013) and Tintagel Castle Pedestrian Bridge (2014) were commissioned by virtue of a request for qualifications and the shortlisting process. Both were administered by the An “eco-district” Master Plan
Winning plan by Knight Frank (all images courtesy centeragency.org)
Moscow has been short on housing for decades. Now the need for housing in the far-flung reaches of the Russian Federation is taking shape. Kazan, a city east of Moscow on the upper reaches of the Volga River
Whether it was the establishment of a shrimp industry, general water and flood abatement, or a site for bird migration, the Hsinta Ecological Power Plant competition produced a plethora of interesting approaches to mitigate the negative effects normally associated with the introduction of a power plant. With one possible exception, each of the five finalists in this international, two-stage competition showed an extensive amount of research to support their design strategies and the underlying sustainability features.
Finetuning a Sydney Suburb’s Future
Winning Entry: ©James Mather Delaney (JMD Design}
Competitions in Australia have become more commonplace than could have become anticipated two decades ago. It was in the early 1990s that Sydney’s mayor, Frank Sartore, decided that competitions could improve on the rather mediocre architecture so prevalent
In Paris, it’s no longer just about Grands Projets. Lately, the French have become more focused on areas bordering the Seine River, and how to turn them into more attractive destinations for locals and visitors alike. The most recent projet, and the subject of a competition, was Place Mazas, located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 12th District. Partially because of the bordering highway’s proximity to the river, the site is underused and hardly regarded as a high profile destination.
Now that may all change. The competition, won by the New York-based firm, SO-IL, has conceived a plan, which will create a series of park areas and structures relating to the current needs of the community. Sustainability is almost always on the front burner in these competitions, and this was no exception. SO-IL’s plan for the site’s only major building is a seven-story structure made primarily of wood. Although situated all by itself at the end of a street—bordering on the Seine—its shape and size serve to address the composition of the streetscape in a very logical, spatial manner. According to the intent of the winner, “This volume includes a housing program in co-living typology, with several interior and exterior shared spaces for the residents as well as a public restaurant on the ground floor.”
The rest of the site is devoted to “public activities,” opening up views to the Seine River and includes a repurposed 1905 lockhouse and a “temporary pavilion” hosting facilities like public co-working spaces, a fabricaion lab, an event room and a terrace offering views on the Arsenal Basin, the river, and the surrounding city, “as well as a facility for homeless care already established on site.” Labeling the pavilion as a “temporary” structure is based on the assumption that neighborhoods are always evolving, and that future changes could be in store.
Access from downtown Toronto to its waterfront has been an ongoing issue for the city fathers for the past decades. One of the major visual barriers to Lake Ontario is the Gardiner Expressway, just a few blocks from the waterfront and the subject of a 2010 competition. It was abandoned with no premiated designs and no indication of future solution. Participants in that competition were familiar faces: KPMB + Bjarke Ingels Group, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro/ Architects Alliance, West 8 DTAH/Cecil Balmond AGU, and Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (See: http://gardinereast.ca/design-ideas). Part of the problem with either burying the Gardiner or eliminating it altogether within the central core did not have so much to do with political will, but the lack of funding at the municipal level.
One piece of the puzzle has now been addressed—the ferry terminal on the waterfront and its environs. Although the site is confined to a relatively small area, the vision for rethinking the possibilities of making it more pedestrian and user-friendly have been the subject of a recent competition, with five invited firms vying for the opportunity to realize their proposals.
What made this competition so interesting were not only the challenges of packing a number of required elements into a relatively small site—without giving the impression of crowd congestion—but also the organized flow of several thousand departing (and arriving) passengers headed for offshore islands and other destinations on Lake Ontario. Combined with all that were the aesthetics—the visual impressions of arrival, departure and a park-like setting, as well as the location of the necessary terminal structure(s).
The competition itself was launched as an RfQ, with five shortlisted firms invited to present schemes in a single-stage competition. They were: • Stoss Landscape Urbanism (Boston) + nARCHITECTS (New York City) + ZAS Architects (Toronto) • Clement Blanchet Architecture (Paris) + Batlle i Roig (Barcelona) + RVTR (Toronto and Ann Arbor) + Scott Torrance Landscape Architect Inc. (Toronto) • Diller Scofidio+Renfro (New York City) + architectsAlliance (Toronto) + Hood Design (Emeryville, CA) • KPMB Architects (Toronto), West 8 (Rotterdam), Greenberg Consultants (Toronto) • Quadrangle Architects (Toronto), aLLDesign (London), Janet Rosenberg & Studio (Toronto)
The major departure features of all but one of the entries were the location of two-tier structures directly across from the ferry docks, with two having large canopies as shelter, and two providing rooftop parks with outlooks to the Lake. One of the latter was the winner of the competition, KPMB of Toronto with landscape architecture firm West 8 of Rotterdam and Greenberg Consultants (planning) of Toronto.
KPMB’s main entrance to the Ferry Terminal from Bay Street is a parklike entrance, creating a promenade eventually leading to an entrance to the processing area for passengers, with the option to climb up an elevated rooftop extension of the park where one finds a meandering pathway leading to a lookout area. From the eastern side, the path is also accessible from Yonge Street, also leading into the park. Parking is located under a hill in the park, with ticket processing and waiting areas for the boats located under the park extension canopy. The area to the west of the Terminal is a generous park area, which includes a slip for recreational craft.
JOHN MCASLAN: And how not to do them, I hope.
COMPETITIONS: You’re familiar with one of those?
JM: We recently did one—Middlesborough Town Hall. It caused a real furor here.
COMPETITIONS: Usually the RIBA competitions are well organized.
JM: This was an open, non-RIBA competition to re-market (rebuild) the Town Hall in Middlesborough, a town which had quite a good artistic tradition. About ten years ago they commissioned Claes Oldenburg to design a sculpture. There was also a competition for a museum there—which we didn’t get. And then there was the competition for the Town Hall, where we got to the last six. It was chaotic, as to what was to be submitted. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, because the terms of reference weren’t clear. And then there were long delays before the interviews. Finally we were asked to submit a tender(fee bid). But of the six tenders, only four arrived on time. Because of that, the two late tenderers were eliminated. I thought, ‘well, you know you have to get them in on time.’ But then one of the jurors walked out, because she thought it unfair that these two had been eliminated. Then it came out that they had opened the bids before the interviews took place. You asked about the RIBA competitions. We have won some and lost a some. But you can say that they are always immaculately organized—very transparent, no confusion over what is required when. If a competition is badly administered with lots of criticism, it doesn’t help at all, especially with funding.
Science Center, Florida Southern College (1996-2001) Lab interior (left) and model (right)
COMPETITIONS: You were recently in the Fresh Kills competition in the U.S.
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