Parks for the People Competition Moves to Second Round

Here are the winners of the first round of competition in “Parks for the People: A Studio Competition to Re-imagine America’s National Parks.” These teams – from nine colleges and universities – advance from a field of 41 entries from 35 schools to design studio exercises during the second semester of the 2011-12 school year and a jury review next summer.

Here are the parks the teams will work with, the schools and a brief project description:

Biscayne National Park (Miami) -
Florida International University College of Architecture + the Arts
Team Leader: Roberto Rovira, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture
Florida International University and its interdisciplinary team will explore Biscayne National Park as a place where much of our 21st century relationship with the natural world can be reexamined. Using robust mapping and cataloguing, the studio will explore how the story of the park can be revealed to its visitors as well as how much the visitors are an implicit part of that story. The product will be an extensive atlas of project proposals that span macro to micro, region to site, and that give us the context in which to reconcile the timeless grandeur of Biscayne with the needs and questions of contemporary society.

Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (Atlanta) -
Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
 Team Leader: Marc Miller, Lecturer, Department of Landscape Architecture
Cornell University's Department of Landscape Architecture will explore the historic uses and contemporary imperatives of the national recreation area including sustainability, economic viability, regional demographics, user groups, materiality, and network legibility to create landscapes that engage the public in a dynamic manner. Using a thesis approach, six students will look intensively, but individually, at critical topics facing the park and the National Park Service today.

Civil War Defenses of Washington, D.C. -
University of Pennsylvania School of Design
Team Leader: Randall Mason, Associate Professor of City & Regional Planning and Chair, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
The University of Pennsylvania's Graduate Program in Historic Preservation asks how to design a park that's more than a park, recognizing that contemporary parks can no longer be easily animated by a singular vision, such as its historic preservation. Building a framework that strengthens the thematic, topographic, and ecological threads that define this extensive system of earthen fortifications ringing Washington D.C., this studio will propose designs that reveal the historical meaning of Civil War Defenses of Washington while enhancing its diversity as a place to live and a destination to visit.

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site (Elverson, Penn.) -
Pratt Institute School of Art and Design and Rutgers University 

Pratt Institute Team Leader: Jon Otis, Professor, Exhibition Design Intensive Studio, and Tim Ventimiglia, Visiting Associate Professor, Associate, Ralph Appelbaum Associates
Pratt Institute's Exhibition Design Intensive Studio's class of 21 students brings forth Pratt's renown for research, exploration, and refinement of new frontiers in exhibition design to Hopewell's unique and evocative stories.
 

Rutgers University School of Environmental and Biological Sciences:Team Leader: Kathleen John-Alder, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture
Rutgers University's Department of Landscape Architecture coordinates a rich, interdisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate students to explore the social, cultural, ecological and physical dynamics that have defined the site over time. The goal is to create a landscape vision that increases public interest through the creation of new physical and social networks that link the site to a wider range of people, places, interests and events.

Nicodemus National Historic Site (Nicodemus, Kan.)
Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning, and Design and
The City College of New York’s Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture
 

Kansas State Team Leader: La Barbara James Wigfall, Associate Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional & Community Planning
Kansas State University’s Department of Landscape Architecture, Regional & Community Planning will generate a wide range of sustainable community development alternatives based on informed decision-making. The visitor experience will be enhanced by creating growth in the community. K-State will present a clear plan for the implementation of opportunities that draw visitors and new residents and create innovative community design concepts to revitalize Nicodemus Township and the National Park Service visitor experience. Students in the studio will learn and participate in this important component of the community development process – citizen participation. The studio environment will look at community strengths, regional health, family dynamics, public education, partnerships, community development strategies, best practices, forecasting models, economic development, marketing, and history as components of thoughtful design.

City College of New York Team Leader: Denise Hoffman Brandt, Director and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture
City College of New York proposes to "strengthen the interpretative scope of Nicodemus National Historic Site in the context of other African American and westward expanding settlements across the country, but also to connect it with institutions taking part in larger discussions of rights to ethnic identity and the often obscure mechanisms with which minority populations struggle to achieve equity. This outreach initiative has the dual effect of increasing awareness about the historic site to communities across the country, and it offers potential to revitalize the local community of Nicodemus through engagement in an expanded cultural network involved in related issues such as racial discrimination, shifting labor status in global markets, emerging approaches to ecologically viable land management and rural depopulation. This agenda is in accord with a core principle of Designing the Parks: to ‘understand tensions; integrate multiple values and perspective.’ The City College of New York studio will explore design of information apparatus, both conceptual and physical, for Nicodemus that could be modified for use at other parks and historic sites.

San Juan Island National Historical Park (Friday Harbor, Wash.)
University of Washington College of Built Environments
Team Leader: Ken Yocom, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, and Manish Chalana, Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Design and PlanningThe University of Washington’s Department of Landscape Architecture engages interdisciplinary students and faculty in re-framing the image, narratives, and processes of San Juan Island National Historical Park to more comprehensively engage and effectively serve diverse populations for the 21st Century. The goal of the course is to synthesize the theory and practice of historic preservation planning, landscape architecture, interpretation, and conservation to shape design visions for the Park's evolving future. The course objectives are thus to undertake a creative, collaborative, and research–informed design process to articulate robust, exciting, and sustainable visions for this park – visions that may be extended to other sites within the National Park System.

Valles Caldera National Preserve (Jemez Springs, N.M.)
Rice University School of Architecture
Team Leader: Gordon Wittenberg, Professor and Graduate Director, School of Architecture Rice University Graduate School of Architecture will test “Designing the Parks” principals through the lens of one problem essential to the development of every park: the development of a suite of buildings for a potential national park location, Valles Caldera National Preserve in central New Mexico. This studio has two goals. First, define a contemporary human ecology as a basis for park design. The team will define the unique overlay of culture and material systems that represent present conditions and aspirations. Secondly, the team will experiment with using certain aspects of this ecology as a basis for the development of architectural form.

Contacts for Parks for the People Competition:

Jeffrey Olson, Jeffrey_olson@nps.gov 202.208.4988
Shaun Eyring, shaun_eyring@nps.gov 215-597-8850
Sarah Farwell, Van Alen Institute, sfarwell@vanalen.org 212-924-7000 Ext. 14