Four teams are currently locked in a competition to design Washington, D.C.'s first elevated park. OMA, Höweler + Yoon, NEXT Architects, and Cooper, Robertson & Partners have just released their preliminary design proposals for what will be known as the 11th Street Bridge Park.
The new park will be suspended over the Anacostia River and will link up two districts of the city. A cafe and water sports area, as well as performance and educational spaces, are included in each design. You can rank the designs and offer feedback here.
The winner will be announced on October 16.
Here are the shortlisted design plans:
Balmori Associates / Cooper, Robertson & Partners
Bridge Park will function as much as a civic center as it will as a park. It is more than a river crossing; it is a place. It will be a pioneer by strengthening the communities that give it life. Through the design of Bridge Park, we believe we can help re-connect the diverse neighborhoods on both sides of the river, re-engage the Anacostia River, improve the general quality of public health through physical and social activity, and generate new jobs for local citizens of the district. Three concepts have shaped our design. Our goal is to create a Bridge Park that is: inclusive, memorable and symbolic.
OLIN / OMA
Our design for the 11th Street Bridge Park—the Anacostia Crossing—is a place of exchange. The park at Anacostia Crossing will connect two historically disparate sides of the river with a series of outdoor programmed spaces and active zones that will provide an engaging place hovering above, yet anchored in, the Anacostia River. To create this place—more destination than elevated throughfare—we have designed the bridge park as a clear moment of intersection where two sides of the river converge and coexist. Anacostia Crossing will offer layered programs, presenting a new neighborhood park, an after-hours destination for the nearby workforce, a retreat for residents and a territory for tourists to explore.
Stoss Landscape Urbanism / Höweler + Yoon Architecture
Historically in Washington, small boats and rafts, then ferries, provided vital links across the city’s rivers, including at places along the Anacostia River. In the not so recent past, ferries shuttled workers living in the Anacostia neighborhood across the river to their jobs in the Navy Yard. These ferry crossings became as much places of congregation and assembly, places of social exchange, as they were places of passage. Our proposal for the 11th Street Bridge Park puts in place a new crossing, one that establishes new connections across and to the Anacostia River and to the burgeoning and socially / culturally rich neighborhoods along its banks.
Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT) / NEXT Architects / Magnusson Klemencic Associates
Welcome to Anacostia Landing, a 25-acre park centered on the Anacostia River, gateway to historic Anacostia and extraordinary perch from which to view the District of Columbia’s emergence as a waterfront city. The WRT/NEXT design fulfills this vision by giving coordinated and exciting form to the goals set forth in the competition brief: reconnect diverse communities, reengage people with the river, improve public health through recreation and play, and expand economic opportunity.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Great Solutions: Healthcare
11. Operating Room-Integrated MRI will Help Neurosurgeons Get it Right the First Time A major limitation of traditional brain cancer surgery is the lack of scanning capability in the operating room. Neurosurgeons do their best to visually identify and remove the cancerous tissue, but only an MRI scan will confirm if the operation was a complete success or not.
| Aug 11, 2010
Great Solutions: Collaboration
9. HOK Takes Videoconferencing to A New Level with its Advanced Collaboration Rooms To help foster collaboration among its 2,212 employees while cutting travel time, expenses, and carbon emissions traveling between its 24 office locations, HOK is fitting out its major offices with prototype videoconferencing rooms that are like no other in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
2009 Judging Panel
A Matthew H. Johnson, PE Associate Principal Simpson Gumpertz & HegerWaltham, Mass. B K. Nam Shiu, SE, PEVP Walker Restoration Consultants Elgin, Ill. C David P. Callan, PE, CEM, LEED APSVPEnvironmental Systems DesignChicago D Ken Osmun, PA, DBIA, LEED AP Group President, ConstructionWight & Company Darien, Ill.
| Aug 11, 2010
Inspiring Offices: Office Design That Drives Creativity
Office design has always been linked to productivity—how many workers can be reasonably squeezed into a given space—but why isn’t it more frequently linked to creativity? “In general, I don’t think enough people link the design of space to business outcome,” says Janice Linster, partner with the Minneapolis design firm Studio Hive.
| Aug 11, 2010
BIM school, green school: California's newest high-performance school
Nestled deep in the Napa Valley, the city of American Canyon is one of a number of new communities in Northern California that have experienced tremendous growth in the last five years. Located 42 miles northeast of San Francisco, American Canyon had a population of just over 9,000 in 2000; by 2008, that figure stood at 15,276, with 28% of the population under age 18.
