Portland Society for Architecture Complete City: Imagined - Winning Submissions Announced

On an evening in July our extraordinary jury gathered in the Osher Map Library to deliberate and celebrate the 28 submissions we received for the inaugural Complete City: Imagined.

Given the set of criteria: Source, Define, Push, Inspire and Contribute the jury concluded the most compelling task was to determine how each submission chose to approach the riddle of: what is a complete city (recognizing that no city is ever complete) while capturing the 'ethos' of Portland, Maine.

Some submissions took the opportunity to create a venue or a cultural institution to celebrate an aspect of Portland, raise awareness for an over-looked site, or activate and gather community. Others focused on broad solutions for affordable housing, land use and transportation and climate change.

But the jury, debating the finalists, agreed that an over-arching construct that most closely addressed 'complete' couldn't be limited to just one project, or just one winning entry for this inaugural competition.  

Three stood out, at various scales, that the jury felt most embodied elements that start to crack that riddle - at a neighborhood, city and regional level.

Congratulations to the following teams:

Portland's Urban Ballet | A socially-conscious placemaking prototype

Team: Caitlin Aceto, Nick Aceto, Seth Kimball, Russ Tyson, Nina Swart and Liz Trice

Our proposal strives to illustrate a prototype for neighborhood-scale shelters which can be integrated into the neighborhood context while providing valuable uses such as medical and commercial office, attainable housing, retail space, and maker studios together in a single urban block. The intention is that this model can be employed in any Portland neighborhood with careful, contextually-sensitive planning and design. Indeed, our proposal is a designed-solution to broad, chronic socio-economic dilemmas.

Smart Scales | Allocation Strategies

Team: Brett Dong Ha Lee

After researching successful smart city models of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Singapore and Tallinn, I've noticed one common element - it is not just about proximity to nature or culture but the presentation scheme of enticing city amenities real-time. I propose a real time interaction system with solar 'petal' trees that collect air quality and transit information, provide city amenity information on its tablet, and produce energy.

 Forest City of Birds & Birdsong
 
Team: Rene Noel, Tilman Reitzle and Liz Trice

Our proposal takes a comprehensive approach to making Portland a city where every resident and visitor can enjoy the sights and sounds of nature on a daily basis. Birdsong makes humans happy, so why not build our city so that both birds and humans are happy living here?

These submissions and the 25 others will be debuted (with the accompanying Complete City maps that served as inspiration) at the UNE Art Gallery on the Portland Campus opening Saturday, October 26th

Congratulations to everyone who submitted - this was an extraordinary collection of ideation + exploration and we look forward to celebrating your work!