Past Competitions + Winners
Past Competitions + Winners
Explore past Better Philadelphia Challenges. Clicking on the titles below will take you to more details about that year's competition including jurors, winners, and images of the winning entries.
Philadelphia’s City Branch is an unused network of 115-year-old depressed rail lines that transported goods and people into and out of Center City Philadelphia. Friends of the Rail Park, a non-profit advocacy and fundraising group, has developed a vision for a 3-mile linear park and multi-modal transportation corridor on the unused rail lines that connects 10 neighborhoods. Taking into consideration the three-mile vision for the park, what design interventions could improve access to, pedestrian and bicycle transit through, lighting in, and programming for the Rail Park Tunnel, making this covered section a useful, fun, and safe public space for all?
The greater Mantua/Belmont neighborhood of Philadelphia was chosen as one of President Obama’s first “Promise Zones” for economic development – one of only five in the country. This neighborhood is bordered by some of Philadelphia’s largest institutions (the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, the Philadelphia Zoo, and Fairmount Park), as well as by large industrial sites (most notably the AMTRAK rail yards). As part of this neighborhood’s future development, what physical design interventions could encourage healthy and active lifestyles, thereby improving public health among residents?
Petty Island, the site of multiple development proposals over the centuries (even Louis Sullivan drafted plans for an entertainment complex on the island in 1907), languishes today as a nearly-forgotten storage site for petroleum tanks and cargo containers. How might Petty Island - and the land adjacent to it on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware River - be developed as a visionary 21st Century complex that creatively addresses today’s and tomorrow’s cultural, environmental, and economic needs?
Recent major advances in driverless technology mean vehicles and their infrastructure are likely to transform American cities in the coming century. What will Philadelphia look like in this future? How will roadways, sidewalks, intersections, signage, traffic signals, and the relationship between buildings, roadways, pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles change? We challenge university-level students to re-imagine the right-of-way occupied by intelligent vehicles and the associated impact on urban design.
Amtrak’s main corridor through Philadelphia lies just outside Center City, on the Western bank of the Schuylkill River, passing through Philadelphia’s iconic 30th Street Station. Wrapping around the station and hugging the Western bank of the Schuylkill River, Interstate 76 provides the city with one of its most heavily used entries and exits for passenger vehicles. What opportunities are there for re-imagining this complex hub of transit and its integration with the entire city?
Interstate 95 on the Eastern edge of Philadelphia is due to be demolished and rebuilt within the next several years, as it is nearing the end of its designed life. Further complicating the urban fabric in this area of the city is a lightly used but important freight rail line (owned and operated by CSX) which still weaves around the highway, its surrounding streets, and neighborhoods. How should the traffic, both passenger and freight, that currently flows along this major North/South corridor be addressed in a newly built Interstate solution?
Philadelphia has a long tradition of hosting national and international expositions to celebrate America’s birthday. The year 2026 will mark the nation’s 250th. What will this type of celebration look like in the 21st century, and how will it impact our urban landscape? The 5th annual Ed Bacon Student Design Competition focuses on imagining innovative visions for the Fair of the Future.
"Brown to Green" challenges students across North America to create a new vision for South Philadelphia's Grays Ferry Crescent. With the industrial DuPont Marshall Laboratory complex closing down and the Schuylkill River Development Corporation extending its riverfront park trail along the edge of the site, this area offers strong potential, but also great challenges. The competition gives students the opportunity to push the envelope on cutting-edge ideas for transforming brownfields of an industrial past into sustainable environs for a green future.
The Ludlow Neighborhood of North Philadelphia was a focus area of Philadelphia's renowned neighborhood renewal programs in the 1950s and 1960s. However, experimental ideas like selective clearance and scattered-site public housing were ultimately unsuccessful in Ludlow, leaving a neighborhood with large-scale abandonment and many parcels owned by the public sector. Today, Ludlow is a small but proud community with problems similar to other areas of Philadelphia and cities across the U.S. The 3rd Annual Ed Bacon Student Design Competition challenges students to study the Ludlow Neighborhood and develop fresh design solutions for reviving Ludlow and similar dis-invested communities.
This year's competition focuses on Market East, an area of Center City Philadelphia that was significantly shaped by Ed Bacon's planning concepts. Entrants are asked not to design or improve upon the original scheme, nor are they asked to realize Bacon's goals for the site. Instead, entrants are challenged to conceive a new and original concept for improving the site, showing awareness of its historical evolution, the site's modern users and opportunities, and keeping an eye to the future.