15th Annual Mayor’s Design Award Winners Announced (Photo Gallery)
The winners of the 15th annual Mayor's Design Awards have been announced with projects ranging from a high-rise housing tower to a complete street redesign taking home awards.
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The winners of the 15th annual Mayor's Design Awards have been announced with projects ranging from a high-rise housing tower to a complete street redesign taking home awards. Back to the full article.
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Good stuff. All worthy projects, but if I must pull out my design hat…. good lord, about half of these have nothing whatsoever that I would remotely call design. The goodwill store? What? There’s zero innovation there.
Granted, all of them are decently done, good for the city, and integrate well into the urban fabric – something many architects forget to do. But great design? Sheesh guys, c’mon!
It’s about rewarding precedent with many of these projects. Greenstreet praised the Goodwill store for opening up windows to the street (which is a good precedent albeit not earth shattering) and for re-using a space that people were feeling pretty hopeless about. Everything is relative.
While I generally agree with Tyrell’s comments, GT is right on. Many of the projects are pretty ordinary, but the backstory to some of the less high brow stuff is often compelling — a project facing tough odds because of program, giving life to the street where a building tenant typically would not, working in a tough part of town, etc… Those issues should be celebrated.
Limited budgets and challenging clients shouldn’t be excuses though for architects not to honor good scale, proportion, and planning — so it’s free game to be critical on those items. It’s the faux historic stuff on the list that stands out to me in that regard. Looks cheap now and will look even worse ten years from now. Details from 100 years ago weren’t meant to be replicated with break metal and cement board.
Of course I am particularly pleased (and was surprised) to learn of the S. 2nd Street win. For those who don’t know the history, its worth highlighting. The city originally intended to repave S. 2nd to maximize automobile use. A grassroots effort was mobilized to advocate for a complete street instead. Urban Milwaukee helped create awareness by running stories on the issue. For example here: http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2009/04/30/complete-street-makeover-for-s-2nd-street/
What was particularly exciting about the effort was that we found a volunteer, simply by posting comments to a UM blog post, and Kieran Sweeney, a person I have still never met in person, volunteered to create a visual image of what 2nd Street could look like as a complete street. This image was subsequently entered in a GOOD magazine national competition and came in second place: http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2009/05/20/s-2nd-street-redesign-concept-is-a-pretty-good-one/
As a result of that success, more public awareness was brought to the situation. Ultimately, to the credit of leaders at the City, particularly folks like Clarke Wontoch at DPW and the Alderman of that time Jim Witkowiak, the street design was reconsidered and S. 2nd Street was made complete. Today, the emergence of several new small businesses in previously vacant storeftonts, new construction infill development, and many happy pedestrians and bicycles are all testimony to the positive impact of the new street. Three cheers for the power of citizen activism, positive debate, journalism, and open-minded policy-makers and public servants. In the end, we all won!