January 14, 2019 Three Students Awarded Honorable Mention in International Design Competition
A team of three students in the School of Landscape Architecture and School of Architecture received an honorable mention in an international design competition.
The competition, LA+ICONOCLAST, challenged students to reimagine and redesign Central Park for the 21st century. The competition was open to students and professionals from any discipline and from anywhere in the world.
Students involved in the project include Dustin Toothman, Dual Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture; James Halliwell, fifth-year Architecture; and Sue Choi, Master of Landscape Architecture.
Of 382 entries and 193 designs across 30 countries, five winners were chosen, and ten honorable mentions were named. Because of the students’ honorable mention, their design will be published in the LA+ Journal in fall 2019.
The students’ design, titled “Green Screen,” imagines New York City following the devastation of Central Park, and many other green spaces across the U.S., due to ecoterrorism. The students redesigned Central Park using the concept of augmented reality. Using a headset, the design allows visitors to revisit Central Park as it was before.
“The project goes beyond Central Park,” explains Toothman. “It speaks to the loss of our environments as we know them: loss from natural disasters, loss from war, loss from terrorism. Green Screen is about loss, memory, and the future of our environments.”
Toothman said that working as a team on this project was a rewarding experience, “It was challenging to develop the narrative to match what was going on in our brains. James created some stellar drawings that kickstarted the project while Sue and I began to draft a narrative, eventually coming together to curate our final submission.”
The jury consisted of six academic and practicing professionals, including Richard Weller, Jenny B. Osuldsen, Charles Waldheim, Lola Sheppard, Geoff Manaugh and Beatrice Galilee.
LA+ICONOCLAST is hosted by LA+, an Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture published by the University of Pennsylvania.
