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Four Visions of the Minneapolis Riverfront

Back in Spring 2010, I ran a graduate studio playing around in North Minneapolis, now it's the urban design/landscape competition du jour! The semi-finalist teams are:

Ken Smith et al
Stoss et al
Tom Leader et al
and
Turenscape

the official competition site is: minneapolisriverfrontdesigncompetition.com/

1/27 evening - live webcast of the semi-finalists over at the Walker to an overflow crowd (they will likely have this as podcast later). More links & images to come. Official jury is tomorrow with the winner announced on Feb 10th...

Few (live blogging) thoughts about the proposals (from looking at the balky low-rez webcast):

- $30k fee for each team barely covers the travel expenses and water color renderings. $250k of time/labor is quite a marketing gamble - the big winner is Mpls!

- two teams both focus on mussels so far, Stoss had nice diagrams of the urban ecology tied to the mussel, while Ken Smith just described them as an indicator species for water quality.
- some of the teams seem to ignore the topography in situating water features.
- still looking for innovation that resonates with the site versus LU concepts that are juxtaposed on the urban fabric.
- like the tactile descriptions: sand, mud, mist/spray...
- every team is showing the site plan with north to the left, this is annoying.
- Landbridges are recurring in the proposals, though Ken Smith wins the boldest cover of i-94 award...
- TLS's project is the most 'naturalistic' almost romantic in landforms, others are very geometric as expected.
- TLS & Turenscape address climate change impacts on the Upper Mississippi River
- Also a unique TLS feature is they engaged downtown/Nicollet Mall with water.
- 'solidarity and play...' not sure if MN is ready for solidarity when we play!
- Turenscape is looking 50 years into the future, others didn't discuss timeframe (or maybe I missed it during one of the broken connections).
- Turenscape's proposal seems heavy handed or maybe it's just the graphics that are circa '90
- sun flowers, alfalfa, clover, and biofuel plantations - not quite the usual MN mix of hostas and prairie flowers.
- Stoss's lightsabers are anti-migrating bird friendly
- only turenscape invoked the 'grand rounds' but they all missed making a crosstown connection to Theodore Wirth Parkway...
- most of the river edge/water level features (shown by all teams) are not rugged enough to deal with ice/river debris, tis a shame that all the pretty pretty will get smashed the first spring melt.


So the videos and full presentation books will be available 1/28th and comments can be submitted via the official site.

 
Jan 27, 11 9:39 pm
St. George's Fields

All the videos are password protected. LOL.

Nice public outreach.

Jan 27, 11 9:50 pm  · 
 · 

Ux Try: www.ustream.tv/channel/walker-art-cernter

if the link above doesn't work...

Jan 27, 11 9:57 pm  · 
 · 
St. George's Fields

This has haphazard written all over it. And I pretty much hate nature-
inspired waterfronts in urban cores.

It's okay though... because all of your sewage ends up in St. Paul!

Jan 27, 11 10:09 pm  · 
 · 
beekay31

Being an ex-resident, I have to say this is long overdue and I hope it gets developed. The area is dying for it. In fact, my first studio revolved around recreating a connection from Nicollet Ave. and the city back to the river. That was 15 years ago!

Uxbridge, if you're familiar with the Twin Cities, you know that the Grand Rounds is a chain of lakes and a semi-broken garden loop around the circumference of the cities. It's something like 30-40 miles around with the Mississippi River slicing right through the middle of it, their park system. Bikeways and parkwasy, trails around most of the lakes. The whole city's identity is pretty much a nature-inspired waterfront.

http://www.minneapolisparks.org/grandrounds/home.htm

Jan 28, 11 1:53 am  · 
 · 
beekay31

Yeah, not digging the used car sale promotional lights, either.

Jan 28, 11 3:03 am  · 
 · 
St. George's Fields

I get that and all.

But I have a friend who just went up there for the 2010 APA convention. It was all "Look at our parks, look at our lakes, look at these views, look at these quaint streets... North Minneapolis doesn't exist."

But the connection to nature is surprisingly superficial in some aspects. Minneapolis is one of the few "major" cities in this country that still has combined sewer overflows.

Now, they've been better than most at separating the sewage but it hasn't been completed yet (if it has, it hasn't been widely reported). The primary reason? Funding.

It blows my mind that there's all of these parks and water features all proposing connections with nature, ecology and good stewardship. But help the residents of Minneapolis if it rains 5" the day after Thanksgiving. It would give new meaning to the word "gravy boat."

But caring about mussels and rivers is awesome when you live upstream.

Jan 28, 11 3:28 am  · 
 · 

re: Turenscapes heavyhanded approach it seems to tie in with the tone of his recent article in Harvard Design Magazine..

Specifically with regards to the role/impact he indicates designers (and specifically landscrapers) need to play in design process.

And the way in which he is trying to get Chinese government to adopt his policies/designs...

See here

As for the long term timeframe I actually think more of the designs should be lookign that far ahead. At least conceptually. Isn't time/process/flows the whole focus of landscape architecture/urbanism?

Mussels and other sorts of bivavles seem to be getting alot of attention these days.. For instance these proposals or SCAPEs Oyster-tecture

I think it has alot to do with interest in ecological or soft infrastructures/approaches vs hard engineering.

Jan 28, 11 9:53 am  · 
 · 
cowerd

north minneapolis doesn't exist
yes. everyone here is very aware of that. see above comp, the above the falls plan from 2008, and theodore wirth's work from the 1950s (wirth park, victory memorial parkway). doesn't excuse the nasty, but design can't fix institutional issues, like the location of interstates.

CSO's
95% of MPLS sewers are separated, by law all rain leaders must be disconnected from stormsewers and 100% of runoff based on pre-development conditions must be dealt with on-site. BTW NYC, Chicago, Rochester, Milwaukee, KC (all 'major' cities) have CSOs.

The nature is not superficial. The only gorge on the entire Mississippi is in Minneapolis, and the riparian habitat is decent for an urban area. Water quality is still spotty, but that is due to agricultural runoff and not urban runoff/sewage. The entire stretch of river from MPLS to St Paul is in fact a national recreation area, with all the environmental regs that come with.

Jan 29, 11 1:14 am  · 
 · 
treekiller

I'm wondering if a land $$$ multi-block long land bridge over 94 eradicate the NoMi's isolation?

Jan 29, 11 7:32 am  · 
 · 

the star trib shared a few renderings:


ken smith et al


stoss


turenscape

Jan 29, 11 7:51 pm  · 
 · 

Stumbled across designs again over at World Landscape Architecture's minimalistic roundup.

My original position was to favor Turenscape's proposal. But after reviewing again, i actually like TLS/KVA teams alot. Don't know much about that team compared to other three.

Barry are they local(ish)? What else have they done?

The thing that strikes me the most re: their design is the lack of interventions. In the sense the others all seem fairly heavy-handed, both in scale but also in their injection of various objects/programs..

The TLS/KVA is as you said pretty naturalistic and seems to focus more on just landscape rather than the current fashion for the "expanded field"... Although maybe just their rendering style?

Feb 7, 11 9:55 pm  · 
 · 

and the winner is.........

Tom Leader Tom Leader Studio (Berkeley), Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich, Kennedy & Violich Architecture (Boston)

With their selection as the winning team, TLS/KVA will be awarded a riverfront parks commission and become part of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's Minneapolis Riverfront Initiative, of which the design competition was the first phase. While the team's RiverFIRST proposal contained many specific design schemes, no particular location, project or feature has yet been identified for development. As the design competition concludes, the Park Board and its partners will engage in a four-month transition phase to identify next steps


So no, the team 'leaders' are not 'local' but they seem to have paid attention to the location and locality, and have strong local team members:

Design

TLS/KVA, Landscape Architecture/Architecture & Planning, Berkeley, CA/Boston, MA
Kestrel Design Group/Landscape Architecture, Minneapolis, MN
Saint Paul Riverfront Corporation/Urban Design, Saint Paul, MN
Proverb/Graphic Design, Boston, MA

Engineering

InterFluve, Environmental Engineering, Madison, WI/Hood River, OR
Sherwood Engineers/Civil Engineering, Cambridge, MA/San Francisco, CA/New York, NY
Knippers Helbig /Structural Engineering, New York, NY/Stuttgart, Germany
SRF Consulting/Traffic Engineering, Minneapolis, MN
LBG-Guyton Associates/Environmental Engineering, Saint Paul, MN

Economics

Donjek /Development Strategy, Saint Paul, MN
Economic Development Services/Economic Strategy, Minneapolis MN
ConsultEcon/Economic Planning, Cambridge, MA
Mortensen Construction/Preconstruction Management, Minneapolis, MN
Feb 10, 11 5:07 pm  · 
 · 
St. George's Fields

While the team's RiverFIRST proposal contained many specific design schemes, no particular location, project or feature has yet been identified for development.

LOL.

Feb 10, 11 5:32 pm  · 
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he, he.. Did i call it?

Feb 10, 11 9:58 pm  · 
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lots of smart folks predicted this outcome, including Nam!

Feb 11, 11 10:25 am  · 
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