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Designer's Choice Award Winners Announced!

First Place Winner

Tristan Kelly
Jonathan Palmer-Hoffman
Dwayne Smith-Malcolm
Brooklyn, USA

Second Place Winner

Atelier WHY
Hyun Tek Yoon
Soo Bum You
Jersey City, USA / Korea

Third Place Winner

Christina Kimmerle
Fabian Wallmueller
Wien, Austria

In order to round out this community conversation about the Detroit Riverfront we asked those artists, designers, planners and architects that participated in the competition to vote on their 3 favorite designs. The above winners represent the top vote getters from that process.

People's Choice Award Winners Announced!

First Place Winner:

Matthew Edward Getch
Maciej Woroniecki
John Coogan
Simon Ronan
London, United Kingdom

Second Place Winner:

TRIA Group
Tbilisi, Georgia

Third Place Winner:

Fred C. Y. Hsu
Alex Shen-Fu Sheu
Taipei, Taiwan

View Winners and Vote Counts Now!

Part of the mission of the Urban Priorities Committee is to encourage a dialogue between the design community and beyond. In an effort to promote this mission we have also initiated a comment feed for each individual entry's webpage. We are encouraging the designers to engage the process, explain their designs and answer questions you may have about their process. So please get involved in the conversation and utilize the new comment section of the website!

Competition Winners Announced!

View All Competition Entries

Symposium Is a Great Success!

The Detroit by Design: Detroit Riverfront Symposium was hailed as a resounding success by all who attended. The room was filled with over 400 attendees. The symposium was held on December 4 at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The competition jury and symposium panelist included Walter Hood, landscape architect from San Francisco; Reed Kroloff, director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art; Faye Alexander Nelson, President of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy; and Canadian architect Lola Sheppard. The panel discussion was moderated by author and journalist, John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press. Unfortunately, Danielle Libeskind cancelled the morning of the event and did not participate in the symposium or jury. The panel dialogue was passionate and informative. "Creating a dialogue about design and the riverfront was one of our key objectives in hosting the Riverfront Competition," shared Joongsub Kim, Chair of the Urban Priorities Committee.

More photos and video of the symposium coming soon.

"Over the last decades, artists from all over the world--but increasingly from Europe--have parachuted into Detroit to document the physical demise of this once-great American industrial metropolis.  Unfortunately, the urge has been to aestheticize the decay, often with little understanding of the city's history or the underlying social and economic conditions that led to the present troubles.  How much more worthy, and welcome, would be a raft of architectural ideas to redefine the city's waterfront!  The waterfront, after all, was what allowed Detroit to become a major city in the first place. As with many another city in extremis, Detroit's waterfront provides the best location from which to envisage an urban renaissance that, long wished for, has still not arrived."

-Jeffrey Eugenides

Competition

The competition will focus on the area between Cobo Hall and the Renaissance Center and between Jefferson Avenue and the Detroit River. This section of Riverfront which includes Hart Plaza is at the heart of the city. The major streets from the radial street plan created by Augustus Woodward (based on L’Enfant’s layout of Washington D.C.) intersect just north of this site.

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