The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA), recently announced its 2017 gold and silver medalists. The biennial award celebrates transformative places distinguished by physical design and contributions to the economic, environmental, and social vitality of America’s cities. A nationwide committee of urban experts determined the winners from among five finalists, naming SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus in Bethlehem, Pa., the gold medalist and recipient of $50,000 to enhance the project.
Completed in 2016, SteelStacks is the $93.5 million transformation of an abandoned steel mill into a mixed-use cultural and entertainment district. The iconic blast furnaces of the former Bethlehem Steel mill—which employed 31,000 people at its height and supplied steel for the Chrysler Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and World War II battleships—now anchor a new civic commons that honors the city’s steelmaking legacy and symbolizes the rebirth of a region economically devastated by its closure in 1995.
The 9.5-acre SteelStacks campus was designed by WRT of Philadelphia and developed by a consortium led by the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Bethlehem. Envisioned as a “21st century town square,” it includes a public plaza anchored by the blast furnaces as well as the Levitt Pavilion outdoor amphitheater, Bethlehem Visitor Center, ArtsQuest Center,PBS39 public broadcasting center, and Hoover-Mason Trestle Park. The project is a significant source of community pride as well as a local and regional destination, hosting 1.5 million visitors annually for events including free outdoor concerts.
Four other finalists received Silver Medals and $10,000 each to enhance their projects:
- Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building - Boston, Mass.
A community-oriented mixed-use development integrating public school headquarters, public meeting space, retail, and transit. (Submitted by City of Boston)
- Chicago Riverwalk Phases II and III - Chicago, Ill.
Reclaimed waterfront that transforms the river into Chicago’s next great civic park.
(Submitted by Sasaki)
- La Kretz Innovation Campus + Arts District Park - Los Angeles, Calif.
A cleantech incubator, education center, and neighborhood park developed by the local public utility. (Submitted by Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator and John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects)
- Iberville Offsite Rehabs I & II - New Orleans, La.
The rehabilitation of 26 scattered-site historic houses into 46 homes for low-income families. (Submitted by Kronberg Wall Architects/Planners)
RBA entries are completed projects across the contiguous United States. Finalists and medalists are determined through an in-depth evaluation process by the selection committee involving input from the award application, site visits, interviews with project participants and community members, and committee discussions.
The 2017 selection committee:
Knox White - Mayor, Greenville, SC
Kimberly Driggins - Director of Strategic Planning, City of Detroit Planning and Development Department, Detroit, MI
David Lee, FAIA - President, Stull and Lee Incorporated, Architects, Boston, MA
Willett Moss - Principal, CMG Landscape Architecture, San Francisco, CA
Deidre Schmidt - President & CEO, CommonBond Communities, Minneapolis, MN
Scot Spencer - Associate Director for Advocacy and Influence, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore, MD
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Team Tames Impossible Site
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation's oldest technology university, has long prided itself on its state-of-the-art design and engineering curriculum. Several years ago, to call attention to its equally estimable media and performing arts programs, RPI commissioned British architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw to design the Curtis R.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Hanna Theatre, Cleveland, Ohio
Between February 1921 and November 1922 five theaters opened along a short stretch of Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, all of them presenting silent movies, legitimate theater, and vaudeville. During the Great Depression, several of the theaters in the unofficial “Playhouse Square” converted to movie theaters, but they all fell into a death spiral after World War II.
| Aug 11, 2010
Biograph Theater
Located in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, Victory Gardens Theater Company has welcomed up-and-coming playwrights for 33 years. In 2004, the company expanded its campus with the purchase of the Biograph Theater for its new main stage. Built in 1914, the theater was one of the city's oldest remaining neighborhood movie houses, and it was part of Chicago's gangster lore: in 1934, John Dillin...
| Aug 11, 2010
Special Recognition: Triple Bridge Gateway, Port Authority Bus Terminal New York, N.Y.
Judges saw the Triple Bridge Gateway in Midtown Manhattan as more art installation than building project, but they were impressed at how the illuminated ramps and bridges—14 years in the making—turned an ugly intersection into something beautiful. The three bridges span 9th Avenue at the juncture where vehicles emerge from the Lincoln Tunnel heading to the Port Authority of New Yor...
| Aug 11, 2010
World's tallest all-wood residential structure opens in London
At nine stories, the Stadthaus apartment complex in East London is the world’s tallest residential structure constructed entirely in timber and one of the tallest all-wood buildings on the planet. The tower’s structural system consists of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels pieced together to form load-bearing walls and floors. Even the elevator and stair shafts are constructed of prefabricated CLT.
| Aug 11, 2010
Setting the Green Standard For Community Colleges
“Ohlone College Newark Campus Is the Greenest College in the World!” That bold statement was the official tagline of the festivities surrounding the August 2008 grand opening of Ohlone College's LEED Platinum Newark (Calif.) Center for Health Sciences and Technology. The 130,000-sf, $58 million community college facility stacks up against some of the greenest college buildings in th...
| Aug 11, 2010
School Project Offers Lessons in Construction Realities
Imagine this scenario: You're planning a $32.9 million project involving 112,000 sf of new construction and renovation work, and your job site is an active 32-acre junior-K-to-12 school campus bordered by well-heeled neighbors who are extremely concerned about construction noise and traffic. Add to that the fact that within 30 days of groundbreaking, the general contractor gets canned.
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
University of Arizona College of Medicine
The hope was that a complete restoration and modernization would bring life back to three neoclassic beauties that formerly served as Phoenix Union High School—but time had not treated them kindly. Built in 1911, one year before Arizona became the country's 48th state, the historic high school buildings endured nearly a century of wear and tear and suffered major water damage and years of...
| Aug 11, 2010
Top of the rock—Observation deck at Rockefeller Center
Opened in 1933, the observation deck at Rockefeller Center was designed to evoke the elegant promenades found on the period's luxury transatlantic liners—only with views of the city's skyline instead of the ocean. In 1986 this cultural landmark was closed to the public and sat unused for almost two decades.
