A Critical Review of the ULI Competition (Part One)

 
At the beginning of the year, I took part of the Gerald D. Hines Urban Land Institute Design Competition. Me, along with two others from the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative: Tommy Chesnes and Gabriel Faye, and two others from Cleveland State University, one a law student and one an urban planner, formed a very solid team, i must admit. But the competition process began a long time ago. In fact, our Urban Systems professor, Sagree Sharma persuaded us to compete in this competition. Beginning in the fall, we began the very long process of getting ourselves prepared for this competition. Beginning with the initial interviews (or blind dates) we selected teammates who I felt were well rounded students in a variety of subjects. Debby, who was from Germany, had much experience in leadership positions, was our urban planner, and Pete, who had experience in law, was also from CSU.

Our team:
Gabriel Fey | Team Leader | M. Arch + M.U.D. @ CUDC
Brandon Young | M. Arch + M.U.D. @ CUDC
Tommy Chesnes | M. Arch + M.U.D. @ CUDC
Debby Riemann | M.U.P.D. @ CSU
Pete Zahirsky | M.P.A. @ CSU  


The application process, I must add, is quite complex for a design competition. You know its a major competition when you need a separate email address for it. It was also a chance for me to review my teammates resumes; which were very impressive. Truth be told, I was confident that our team had a very good chance of becoming finalists. 

So what is this competition?

"The ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, now in its tenth year, is an urban design and development challenge for graduate students. The Hines Competition challenges multidisciplinary student teams to devise a comprehensive development program for a real, large-scale site. Student teams comprising at least three disciplines have two weeks to develop solutions that include drawings, site plans, tables, and market-feasible financial data. Please visit the competition archives to view previous submissions and view thedocumentary video to learn more about the competition format.  ULI will announce this year’s competition site on January 17, 2012, which is the day the competition officially gets underway.This is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that any of the submitted schemes will be applied to the site. The winning team will receive $50,000 and the finalist teams $10,000 each."-taken from the ULI Competition website

 The competition was exactly 2 intense weeks, during the beginning of the spring semester. So, to top things off, we had studio and other class work to do as well. This just made the competition even more challenging than it already was.Of the 3 teams that participated in the competition from the CUDC, only 2 submitted. However, the other team put up a very good fight. More about this competition to come....