The National Park Service and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay announced a new international design competition to re-invigorate the park and city areas surrounding “one of the world’s most iconic monuments”, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The competition, “Framing a Modern Masterpiece: The City + The Arch + The River 2015,” is called for in the National Park Service’s new General Management Plan, which was created through extensive public input over an 18-month period and approved on November 23, 2009.
According to the Gateway Arch Design competition site, “the Gateway Arch instantly became an international destination and won immediate recognition as one of the world’s premier works of public art. The grounds immediately surrounding it, designed by the late Dan Kiley, are also widely recognized as a landscape masterpiece. However, those grounds, and the city streetscape, highways, and the Mississippi riverfront which they abut, lack the ‘buzz’ of constant activity associated with a vibrant urban park – one of the issues the competition is meant to address.”
Tom Bradley, Superintendent of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, which includes the Gateway Arch, added: “This competition is a unique and important opportunity to integrate the Arch and the park surrounding it into the fabric of the city and region and embrace the Mississippi River and its east bank. By achieving these objectives, we will design people into the area – and establish a national model for urban parks.”
The competition will invite teams to create a new design for the Arch grounds and surrounding areas with ten goals in mind:
- Create an iconic place for the international icon, the Gateway Arch.
- Catalyze increased vitality in the St. Louis region.
- Honor the character-defining elements of the National Historic Landmark.
- Weave connections and transitions from the city and the Arch grounds to the Mississippi River.
- Embrace the Mississippi River and the east bank in Illinois as an integral part of the national park.
- Mitigate the impact of transportation systems.
- Reinvigorate the mission to tell the story of St. Louis as the gateway to national expansion.
- Create attractors to promote extended visitation to the Arch, the city and the river.
- Develop a sustainable future for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
- Enhance the visitor experience and create a welcoming and accessible environment.
Dr. Robert Archibald, President and CEO of the Missouri Historical Society, said: “The Gateway Arch is truly stunning; as magnificent today as it was the day it was completed. We need now to free it of its isolation and connect it to the region and the river on whose banks it sits.”
The winning design will be announced in October 2010, and the work will be completed by October 28, 2015 (the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Arch).
Competition registration ends January 26, 2010. Go to the competition web site to learn more.
Image credit: Encyclopedia Britannica / Richard Pasley—Stock, Boston/PictureQuest
Competition is always exciting! hope through the competition we can pursue a better future building.