April 4, 2011

Sara Hadavi, a Landscape Architecture doctoral student at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, and fellow U-M team members won the top $50,000 prize this week for a redevelopment plan for a Seattle neighborhood.

More than 153 teams from 60 universities competed in the 2011 Urban Land Institute Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. This year, the competition addressed Seattle's traffic congestion and network of auto-oriented neighborhoods and infrastructure.

Student teams were charged with creating a design and development proposal for a 33.5-acre site around the Sound Transit System's Mount Baker light-rail station. The plans were to emphasize sustainability through neighborhood diversity, affordability, walkability and environmental conservation. The station is considered a key to defining how Seattle creates more sustainable and transit-rich neighborhoods.

"This design is largely a reflection of rethinking contemporary urbanism to create more sustainable neighborhoods and livable, resilient cities,"  said Hadavi. The other U-M students on the winning team are Alex DeCamp, a master's student studying urban planning at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; and three Taubman master's students studying urban design: Michel Banna, Amir Hajrasouliha and Aditya Inamdar. Their advisor was Douglas Kelbaugh, a professor of Architecture and Urban Planning.

The Mount Baker station, at the intersection of Rainier Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, is surrounded by property being used for large parking lots, two heavily-traveled thoroughfares and single-family detached residential properties. The competition challenge was to devise a scheme to transform and brand the neighborhood with an identity, and serve as a benchmark for future development in the Greater Seattle region.

The U-M team's winning proposal was titled "Health Oriented Urbanism in South-East Seattle, (H.O.U.S.E.S.)."  It reorients the site to Rainier Avenue with a strong block pattern, effectively calming traffic throughout the district. The theme of creating a healthy integrated community was consistent throughout, showing a thoughtful and well-communicated conceptual framework. The plan embodies four major aspects of sustainability: community health, economic health, environmental health and individual health.

The Michigan team edged out others from the University of Maryland, University of Oklahoma and a second team from the University of Michigan in the final round, held March 31 in Seattle. The three finalist teams split $30,000 in prize funds.

"The winning team conceived a plan with clear architectural character that showed an obvious hierarchy of spaces,"  said James A. Ratner, jury chairman and chairman and chief executive officer of the Forest City Commercial Group in Cleveland. "The plan addressed the transit issues and created a solution that gave pedestrians and bicycles an advantage. Their phasing strategy and its costs were artfully reflected in their financials."

Related links:

More information on the competition: http://www.udcompetition.org/the-results/winner/
View the students' plan: http://www.udcompetition.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Team-5685_compos...
About the ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition: http://udcompetition.org
About the Urban Land Institute: http://www.uli.org