Imagining Penn Center

The Ed Bacon Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of its first national student design competition, Imagining Penn Center.

Here are the winners. See right for links to pdf's of their designs.

• The First Prize of $2,000 went to a team of architecture students from the University of Pennsylvania — John Andrus, Brad Leibin, Ryan Lohbauer, and Jeff Tummelson.
• The Second Prize of $1,500 went to Gustavo A. Garcia of Florida International University.
• First Honorable Mention Prize of $800 went to Ryan Moody of the University of Virginia.
• Second Honorable Mention Prize of $700 went to Andrew Allwine and Ayako Okutani of Temple University.
• Third Honorable Mention Prize of $600 went to Payam Ostovar of the University of Virginia.

In addition, the first and second prize winners also earned a total of $500 to support architecture programs at their respective universities.

The competition opened in March and entries were due postmarked September 15th. The Foundation received 22 entries from 8 states and Canada. Entrants were challenged to create new design concepts for Penn Center — the central but publicly underutilized collection of buildings and plazas in Philadelphia, between 15th and 17th Sts., and between Market St. and J.F.K. Blvd., near 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 judging to select the winners took place on October 5th at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. The judging was blind, with no knowledge of the names or schools of the entrants. The jury comprised Elinor R. Bacon, Principal of Washington D.C.-based E.R. Bacon Development, LLC and one of Edmund Bacon's daughters; Alexander Garvin, President and CEO of New York-based Alex Garvin & Associates, Inc., Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning and Management at Yale University and member of the Ed Bacon Foundation's Board of Directors; and Harris M. Steinberg, FAIA, Executive Director of PennPraxis, Adjunct Professor of Architecture at Penn's School of Design, member of the Philadelphia Historical Commission, and member of the Steering Committee of Design Advocacy Group of Philadelphia.

The awards were presented on October 11th at a ceremony and reception, held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, with Robert A.M. Stern, Architect of Philadelphia's Comcast Center and Dean of the Yale School of Architecture as keynote speaker and recipient of the Foundation's Award for Professional Excellence.