Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Sarah Snider (BSArch’04) Part of Winning Design Team in ULI Competition

Sarah Snider (BSArch, ’04) is a member of the winning team from MIT and the University of Wisconsin in the Urban Land Institute’s seventh annual Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition.

For the 2009 competition, students were asked to present schemes for the Denver Design District (DDD), an area just south of downtown that is home to a large commercial design center. The competition charged the teams with redeveloping the entire site and creating a landmark, transformative mixed-use community without losing the current, valuable roster of tenants.

As an added challenge this year, students were asked to consider the massive demographic, climate and financial changes that will likely alter the parcel in coming decades and how their plans would position the DDD in 2050 and beyond.

Snider’s team competed against 91 teams from 42 universities, a field that was then narrowed to the four finalists. The jury selected MIT team’s entry over plans submitted by finalists from Columbia, Kansas State and the University of Miami.

The winning entry, “Panorama Station, A Proposal for Transit-Oriented Development and Public Space at Alameda Station,” incorporates five key objectives: to provide view-oriented public space, to support a 15-minute car-free lifestyle, to create a sense of place, to anticipate future flexible uses for big box spaces and to integrate water-conserving landscapes.

The awards were announced April 2 during a public forum at the University of Denver and Snider’s team received the $50,000 grand prize.

For more information, please see:

ULI Gerald D. Himes Student Urban Design Competition