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SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus 2017 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence - Gold Medal
Transformation of a former steel plant into a mixed-use cultural and entertainment district.
SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus repurposed an abandoned industrial site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to create an arts and entertainment district. Embracing the city’s past, SteelStacks integrates historic steel-making structures – including five 20-story-high blast furnaces – with new construction to tell the story of steel-making in America while stimulating an economy devastated by the closure of the 1,800-acre Bethlehem Steel Corporation in 1995.
Built on a 9.5-acre former brownfield, SteelStacks includes parks and plazas, an outdoor performing arts pavilion, a visitor center with a theater and community space in the restored historic Stock House building, new buildings for its nonprofit partners ArtsQuest and PBS39, a festival center, and an elevated trestle that gives the 1.5 million visitors each year an up-close look at the plant and its iconic blast furnaces. Its design focuses on connection, linking visitors to the city’s past, connecting the various activities and amenities within the campus, and merging the campus with the South Side neighborhood and the adjacent Sands Casino Resort.
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Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building 2017 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence - Silver Medal
The Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building in Boston, Massachusetts is a mixed-use facility integrating public school offices, retail, transit, and the community. Centrally located in Roxbury’s Dudley Square adjacent to a regional transit hub, it was created by the city of Boston to stimulate community development and investment.
The 215,000 square foot complex incorporates the restoration of three historic facades, including the landmark Ferdinand building, coupled with new construction and capped with a green roof. The interior includes a light filled-atrium, offices, community meeting space, and first floor retail.
The anchor tenant is the newly consolidated Boston Public Schools headquarters. Ground floor restaurants and shops serve building tenants and the surrounding neighborhood. Funding for the $124 million public private development included New Market Tax Credit financing.
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Chicago Riverwalk 2017 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence - Silver Medal
Phases 2 & 3 of Chicago’s Riverwalk transformed underutilized waterfront infrastructure into five distinct “rooms” connecting riverside amenities to the city. The project faced the technical challenge of lowering the Riverwalk to the river’s edge to enable boating and water recreation while creating a sustainable, flood-resilient landscape.
While design elements and materials provide a strong sense of continuity along the path, each of the five waterfront blocks offers a unique shape and programmatic approach to exploring the relationship between the river and the city. New waterfront amenities include art installations and events, educational programs and interpretive signage, restaurants and outdoor seating, kayak rentals, and piers and floating wetland gardens for interactive learning about the river’s ecology. The $95 million project covers 3.5 acres and was completed in October 2016.
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Iberville Offsite Rehabs 2017 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence - Silver Medal
Iberville Offsite Rehabs I & II is the historic rehabilitation of 46 homes in New Orleans, Louisiana into affordable housing for homeless women and children. Located within the 7th Ward and Treme, the formerly vacant and blighted one- and two-family structures were sensitively rehabilitated to provide affordable housing for primarily very low-income families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
The renovations preserved each building’s unique architectural character while providing modern amenities and energy saving features such as solar water heating and photovoltaics. The homes are part of a larger Choice Neighborhoods Redevelopment Plan, a program by the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Completed in 2014, the project is a public private partnership between the Housing Authority of New Orleans, New Orleans Women’s and Children’s Shelter, and Redmellon Restoration and Development. Financing for the $12.1 million scattered site development was provided in part by affordable housing and historic preservation subsidies and low-income housing tax credits.
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La Kretz Innovation Campus and Arts District Park 2017 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence - Silver Medal
La Kretz Innovation Campus + Arts District Park in Los Angeles, California aims to create a dialogue among clean technology innovators, residents, and visitors. La Kretz Innovation Campus’s 61,000-square-foot renovated warehouse in the Downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District is designed to serve as a “hub” for engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and policymakers.
Flexible open and closed workspaces and an inner loop connecting the warehouse’s eight bays foster interaction, and the building features faceted walls and skylights for abundant natural light. Arts District Park – the first public park in the neighborhood – likewise offers a variety of multi-functional spaces to create an “outdoor living room” for the campus and neighborhood. The park creates a “green oasis” while meeting high sustainability standards, including 100% storm water capture and gray water irrigation, and it balances its small size with small-scale habitable spaces along the edges that make the park look and feel more expansive. Completed in 2016, funding for the $49.2 million project was provided by public and private sources and including New Market Tax Credits.
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SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus case study
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Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building case study
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Chicago Riverwalk case study
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Iberville Offsite Rehabs case study
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La Kretz Innovation Campus and Art District Park case study
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SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus application
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Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building application
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La Kretz Innovation Campus and Arts District Park application
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Iberville Offsite Rehabs application
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Chicago Riverwalk application
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Investing in Urban Infrastructure: The 2017 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence
