Winning Entries
Winning Entries
Explore winning entries from the Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Awards Student Competition. Clicking on the titles below will take you to a page with more details about that year's competition including jurors, winners, and images with descriptions from the winning entries.
This year's competition asks students to assess the 1300-acre Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) Refinery site located along the Schuylkill River in southwest Philadelphia. Given the size of the tract (equivalent to Center City Philadelphia) and its proximity to Center City Philadelphia, students should develop a plan that combines the highest and best possible uses of the land while considering the myriad real-world issues facing any proposal to redevelop the site. The PES site’s latest trouble came in the form of an explosion In June of 2019, months after the company filed for bankruptcy. In February 2020, the property went under an Agreement of Sale with Hilco, a developer of multi-use light industrial facilities. Hilco’s plans for the site are still unknown, though the company...
Chelten Avenue is the economic spine of the Germantown neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia. How might this historic shopping district be designed to better support the local community, improve safety and accessibility for pedestrians (and all modes of transit), and help reveal all the nearby amenities available to shoppers: from public parks and swimming pools to historic homes and urban farms?
The Kensington neighborhood has been hit particularly hard by the United States’ opioid drug epidemic, causing the entire neighborhood to suffer its side-effects: streets and other public spaces made unsafe for residents and children due to used needle litter, drug-related violence, and abandoned properties. How can the design of public space in the neighborhood around McPherson Square, from sidewalks and streets to landscaping and street furniture, help address the effects of the opioid epidemic, make the community safer, and improve quality of life for those in the neighborhood?
The year 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the city’s grand, green boulevard linking the center of our city to Fairmount Park. Philadelphia has a wealth of other natural resources and cultural institutions which would benefit from similar linkages to their surrounding communities and with each other. What could a new ‘park+way’ be in a dense and developed 21st century city; one that links Philadelphia’s natural and cultural resources with neighboring communities - both physically and in the minds of residents and visitors?
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?