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FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF IMAGINING PENN CENTER: ITS FIRST NATIONAL STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION

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The Ed Bacon Foundation announced the winners of its first national student design competition at a ceremony and gala reception on October 11, 2006, at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Robert A.M. Stern, Architect of Philadelphia's Comcast Center and Dean of the Yale School of Architecture was the keynote speaker and recipient of the Foundation's Award for Professional Excellence. Student prize dollars totaled over $6,000.

The winners were selected in a blind judging of 22 entries from 8 states and Canada. The competition challenged entrants to create new design concepts for Penn Center ­ the central but publicly underutilized collection of buildings and plazas in Philadelphia, across from City Hall. The competition called for students to generate new ideas for Philadelphia's future, and sought to expose new audiences to the work of Edmund N. Bacon, Philadelphia's late planning director. Bacon created the design concept that became Penn Center in the 1950s and 60s.

The ceremony also included Elinor Bacon, Principal of Washington D.C.-based E.R. Bacon Development, LLC, and one of Edmund Bacon's daughters; Gary Hack, Dean of Penn's Design School; Gregory Heller, President of the Ed Bacon Foundation; and Alexander Garvin, President and CEO of New York-based Alex Garvin & Associates, and member of the Ed Bacon Foundation's Board of Directors.

The competition jury comprised Elinor Bacon, Alexander Garvin, and Harris M. Steinberg, FAIA, Executive Director of PennPraxis.

The Foundation plans on holding a new student competition each year, looking at a different area of Philadelphia.