WAM Plaza Design Competition

WAM Plaza Design Competition

PROJECT: Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Design Competition / LOCATION: Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota

TEAM MEMBERS:
SEH - Landscape Architecture, Urban Design
EE&K - Architecture
Steve Dietz - Arts Program Curator
Christopher Baker - Artist

BLOG DESCRIPTION: The SEH team was selected as one of four teams for a design competition to redesign the Mississippi River Bridge Plaza on the University of Minnesota campus. The plaza, located on the east end of the Washington Avenue Bridge, is a critical public space at University of Minnesota, located adjacent to the newly expanded Weisman Art Museum (designed by Frank Gehry). Our team utilized this blog throughout the competition as a tool to communicate among our team's multidisciplinary & geographically diverse team members.

An exhibition of all four short-listed teams' entries will be on display at the Weisman Art Museum's grand re-opening, beginning October 2, 2011. Teams will present their work to a jury on October 26, when a winner will be decided.

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Jul. 17, 2011 at 10:53am View comments

soft furniture energy generating sustainability green fun play

Soft Rockers

The MIT SOFT Rockers are smart, clean energy charging stations disguised as outdoor rocking lounge furniture. Unlike conventional ‘hard’ urban infrastructure, The SOFT Rocker leverages its environment in a dynamic manner by using the human power of balance to create an interactive 1.5 axis 35 watt solar tracking system.

Jul. 15, 2011 at 4:09pm View comments

chair green grow furniture

Soft furniture

We talked about some of the plaza topography being furniture-like. Maybe, going along with the vertical community gardens idea, some of the furniture can also be planted - at least during the spring summer.

Here are some posts by local landscape design firm ROLU:

Instructables version.

Jul. 13, 2011 at 12:48am View comments

community garden green sustainable

Community gardening

I like the green wall(s) idea, but I also think that it would be great to bring in an element of community gardening and/or agricultural remediation to the Weisman Plaza project:

Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, window farms. They actually have a very evolved program at this point, which allows for a lot of local customization. There is also a larger “maker” community involved.

Natalie Jeremijenko’s vertical gardens are also designed for vertical growing.

And her “no parks” are interesting bio-remediation interventions:

Related, of course, to Mel Chin’s pioneering Revival Field

And local artist Sarah Wolbert’s gardening projects revolve around recycling waste: “Urban Nutrient Detritivore Infrastructures thrive in cities.”