Winners of the annual Albert F. Schenck-Henry Gillette Woodman Scholarship Prize for first-year MArch students have been announced. This year’s theme, Fresh Air, prompted students to redesign an intersection within a provided map to feature two eateries, while considering the sidewalk and the streets in between.
As explained by Lecturer Jacqueline Martinez, Fresh Air is a response to the new urban typologies that have emerged as city life has expanded to the exterior throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. City streets have transformed to accommodate new models of occupation – creating room for social distancing. Restaurants, bars, and cafes have spilled into the streets and public domain, expanding beyond the sidewalks, claiming space, occupying parking spaces, vehicle lanes, and sometimes even parks, plazas, among other interstitial and underused city plots.
This prompt begs the question - can these new typologies be designed to negotiate the collisions and become instead sites of productive negotiation? The tension between these distinctions is at the heart of this project. Most cities have already begun to implement regulations on these spaces addressing some of these colliding interests. At issue is the opportunity to provide space which will augment the neighborhood and the community as well as provide spatial extension to the restaurants. The design of many temporary outdoor dining solutions, or “streeteries,” has been taken on as an opportunity, creating full-fledged environments. Some represent a direct aesthetic extension from their interior identities, others celebrate exterior motifs creating resplendent oases contrasting or uniting with the concrete urban jungle.
The goal of the project was to provide the community with a function it may not even be aware that it needs, with consideration to why a business needs an expanded street presence, and how that expanded street presence can make a meaningful contribution to the urban experience of the neighborhood.
This year's winners include:
Team #5: Bohan Lang, Ross Mackenzie, Qin Wen
Team #17: Danny Jarabekl, Tobie Soumekh, Owen Wang
Team #19: Francisco Anaya, Telmen Bayasgalan, Zihan Li
Team #6: Jinyi Huang, Ravina Puri, Valerie Tse
Team #20: Chongyan Chen, Yuanyuan Lin, Kelvin Vu
Team #23: Shengnan Gao, Maxwell Lent, Shiyi Qi
Team #32: Rachel Seto, Khang Truong, Yanjie Zhang
Honorable Mentions:
Team #9: Zhixuan Song, Sophie Wojtalewicz, Grace Infante
Team #18: Jessica Wong, Siyu Gao, Weijun Peng
Team #22: Hedi Mao, Shenyi Zhang, Xiayu Zhao
Team #24: Liujie Lu, Diego Martin, Jun Yue
Team #29: Daniel Lutze, Boyu Xiao, Rongxuan Zhou
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