Congratulations to the three groups of Weitzman MArch students who won 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in the 7th Annual Philadelphia HOK Futures Design Challenge. This competition was open to Philadelphia-area architecture and interior design students.
1st Place: Coordinated Scatter by Taely Freeman and Regina Gonano. Clustered townhomes surrounding a central courtyard utilize native Philadelphia materials and defamiliarize preexisting colonial roof geometries to provide each resident with their own unique building and floor plan, thus inducing a sense of agency and individuality within the overall whole.
2nd Place: Binding Dialects by Jorge Couso and Clayton Monarch. The Residential Building and Refugee Center project is a unique approach to provide a supportive living environment for refugees through architecture. The design of the building prioritizes the concept of dissolving borders and promoting unity and integration, which will be achieved through the use of natural and locally sourced materials, surrounding context, and community focused features.
3rd Place: Woven Souls by Sharlene Yulita and Rachel Seto. Inspired by the rich history of Philadelphia and Old City, maps of the site were overlayed over the course of history, beginning with the birth of the US in 1776 and ending with a very different context in 1942. A grid system was created based upon these maps which were utilized to create the massing (inspired by the precedent of pavement lot lines at Independence Mall). In essence, the history of the site is woven into the design.
