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Architecture for Humanity New York and the Red Hook Vendors Announce Results of Design Competition
Architecture for Humanity New York and the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, Inc. are pleased to announce the results of the design competition: "A New Marketplace for the Red Hook Park Vendors – An Open Call for Ideas."
Launched on October 7, 2008, the competition gave entrants one month to propose new concepts and ideas for the Red Hook Vendors’ marketplace inside Red Hook Park in Brooklyn. The competition brief asked designers to propose spaces that would allow the vendors to cook and serve food according to health department regulations and also restore the spirit of the marketplace. AFHny hosted this competition to start a conversation about what it will take to regenerate the vitality of the market space that the vendors originally created.
Unlike most design competitions, this "Call for Ideas" does not intend to award a single prize or to build one winning entry. Instead, the competition’s goal was to select a team of design professionals to begin volunteering in collaboration with the Red Hook Vendors and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to study a number of design options for the Vendors’ site in Red Hook Park and to begin to put images of the site’s possibilities into the public discourse. Designers entered this competition not in the hopes of winning prize money, but rather with the hope of volunteering their expertise and ideas to an incredible public project here in New York City.
There were two juries. The first jury consisted of design professionals, a food writer and blogger, the Executive Director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, and a representative of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The second jury consisted of members of the Red Hook Park Vendors. Each jury selected four top entries, and of those, three were the same. The first jury identified five major strategies for the thirty-one ideas we received; these were tents or canopies that ranged from tents small enough to be assembled by individual vendors on each market day to large fabric structures to be installed by the Parks department each summer; projects that played upon the idea of fences and layers of access to the park and to the food stalls; permanent installations, many of which combined cooking space with bleachers; kitchens fused into the base of landforms designed as picnic space, as well as projects using shipping containers, which resonated with Red Hook's history and were seen as practical from a security standpoint. Within those categories, projects ranged from placing delicate tents on the lawn to sculpting the earth into berms that could serve as bleachers. Some could be implemented immediately and focused on being cost-effective, and some addressed the park in the long term.
A key part of the discussion for each jury was the idea of short-term solutions versus a long term plan for the park. Going forward, the larger question of how people socialize in the space of the park, and how the park brings people together ought to continue to drive discussions about what will be constructed.
Selected Designs and the Next Step:
Designers from each of the five "Selected Entries" listed below will be part of a team that engages in the long process of bringing a project from a design idea to a built part of the public realm. The designers of these concepts will begin collaborating with AFHny, the Red Hook Vendors, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation at the beginning of 2009. AFHny looks forward to beginning the project’s next stage of collaboration.
The competition juries selected the following entries:
Selected Entry 1 – "Food Fence"
Designers: Mateo Pinto, Carolina Cisneros
Selected Entry 2 – "Bleachers"
Designers: Miki Onodera
Selected Entry 3 – "Food Coloring"
Designers: Asaf Yogev, Craig Tooman AIA, LEED-AP
Selected Entry 4 – "Double Sided"
Designers: Emilie Graham
Selected Entry 5 – "New Vendor Kiosk"
Designers: Jackie Luk
The juries also awarded the title of "Honorable Mention" to the following designs:
Honorable Mention 1 – "Splitting the Difference"
Designers: Raj Kottamasu, Michael Haggerty, Brian Ackley
Honorable Mention 2 – "Tapas Toldos Plaza"
Designers: Nic Goldsmith, Ashish Soni, Eric Smith, Matthew Hilyard
Honorable Mention 3 – "Groundplane"
Designers: Chris Syrett
Honorable Mention 4 – "Market Made"
Designers: Nick Brinen
AFHny would like to thank our jury members for their time and expertise:
Jury 1 – Design Jury:
- Cesar Fuentes, Executive Director, Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, Inc.
- Joshua Karant, Professor at Pratt Institute and author of the food blog The Porkchop Express
- Meret Lenzlinger, architect, LOCAL Architecture Research Design
- Martin Maher, Chief of Staff-Brooklyn, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
- Jim Polshek FAIA, architect, Polshek Partnership Architects
- Damon Rich, urban planner, teacher, and writer
- Steve Zacks, Associate Editor, Metropolis Magazine
Jury 2 – Vendor Jury:
- Fernando Martinez, Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, Inc.
- Humberto Carrillo, Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, Inc.
- Reina Carrillo, Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, Inc.
- Marcos Lainez, Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, Inc.
- Rafael Soler, Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, Inc.
More Information:
- Gallery of all competition entries
- Competition web page and brief
