When transportation corridors such as highways and rail lines meet dense urban areas, choices must be made about how to balance the needs of the transportation modes and the lively city it intersects.
The Ed Bacon Student Design Competition challenges students across the globe to create new urban design concepts for an important site in Philadelphia.
The competition engenders creativity and vision in young designers and brings focus to an important part of Philadelphia’s civic landscape. The competition is open to college students at any level and in any discipline. A national panel of judges selects the winners, and the Center awards $5,000 to the student winners at a ceremony with a prominent keynote address by the recipient of the annual Edmund N. Bacon Prize for professional practice.
When transportation corridors such as highways and rail lines meet dense urban areas, choices must be made about how to balance the needs of the transportation modes and the lively city it intersects.
Across the world, cities have found innovative solutions for addressing issues relating to large-scale urban transportation infrastructure. Recently in the U.S. cities such as San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis have transformed highways into urban boulevards. Boston buried Interstate 93 in the famous “Big Dig,” but at a huge cost. Other cities have worked to bridge highways and rail corridors that separate downtowns from waterfronts.
With international precedent for design solutions, the Center for Architecture challenges the next generation of urban thinkers to propose novel solutions to integrate Philadelphia’s major transportation corridors into its urban fabric. Amtrak’s main corridor through Philadelphia lies just outside Center City, on the Western bank of the Schuylkill River, passing through Philadelphia’s iconic 30th Street Station.
Wrapping around the station and hugging the Western bank of the Schuylkill River, Interstate 76 provides the city with one of its most heavily used entries and exits for passenger vehicles. What opportunities are there for reimagining this complex hub of transit and its integration with the entire city?
Application Details:
- Pre-register online HERE by 11:59PM EST on October 04, 2012.
- Official Competition Packets will be emailed to all pre-registered individuals on October 05, 2012.
- Final entries must be uploaded to our competition website (web address included in Official Competition Packet) as PDF files by 11:59PM EST October 26, 2012.
- Pre-registration is FREE, each entry requires a $50 fee at time of submission.
