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The Ed Bacon Foundation proudly presents...

IMAGINING PENN CENTER: A National Student Design Competition To Plan New Sustainable Life for Philadelphia's Central Civic Space

Penn Center is one of Center City Philadelphia's central spaces, located across from City Hall, at the eastern end of the city's business district. It houses Suburban Station, offices, shops, and public plazas, with close proximity to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Avenue of the Arts. Conceived by Edmund N. Bacon, Philadelphia's renowned former city planner, Penn Center changed the face of Philadelphia when it was built in the 1960s, as one of the largest and most ambitious downtown redevelopments of its time.

Today Penn Center is underutilized by the public, yet it holds great potential for revitalization. With IMAGINING PENN CENTER, The Ed Bacon Foundation, a tax-exempt non-profit organization, challenges students to imagine Penn Center's potential, and to generate ideas for restoring this important space as a modern Philadelphia epicenter and icon.

IMAGINING PENN CENTER is open to any college or university student in the U.S., studying planning, architecture, urban design, or related fields.

Deadline for entries is September 15, 2006. Winners will be announced in October.

Prizes total $6,100 including $2,000 for first place. Entries will be judged by a national jury including Elinor Bacon (Washington D.C.), Alexander Garvin (New York), and Harris Steinberg (Philadelphia).

The Ed Bacon Foundation is grateful for its Gold-Level Sponsors, CENTER CITY DISTRICT and DOMUS CONSTRUTION INC. and its Silver-Level Sponsors, BLT ARCHITECTS, LIBERTY PROPERTY TRUST, and WRT. For more on the competition sponsors, please visit edbacon.org/penncenter/sponsors.htm.

The Ed Bacon Foundation also thanks the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) for its in-kind support and assistance in publicizing IMAGINING PENN CENTER.

edbacon.org/penncenter