Recently the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and Minneapolis Parks Foundation, with Creative Partners, University of Minnesota College of Design and Walker Art Center announced the finalists for the Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition.
Fifty-five design teams responded to the RFQ, and the 13-member jury noted that the quality was exceptionally high. Says Bill Morrish, MR|DC jury member, and Dean of the School of Constructed Environments and Associate Dean, Parsons The New School of Design in New York City, “The four teams we short-listed comprise innovative and inspirational people who will work very hard to create great concepts for the Minneapolis riverfront.”
The team finalists are:
Ken Smith Workshop | New York City
Stoss Landscape Urbanism | Boston
Tom Leader Studio | Berkeley
Turenscape | Beijing
The finalists are the team leaders with each team having supporting consultants.
Each team will produce 21st-century parks designs for 220 acres of parkland and the surrounding neighborhoods along both sides of the 5.4-mile stretch of the Mississippi River from the Stone Arch Bridge in the historic downtown Mill District to the city’s northern limits. The winning design will be a comprehensive, integrated vision for the Upper Riverfront that establishes parks as the engine for economic development, transforms the river into a connector rather than a barrier between east and west banks, and refocuses Minneapolis toward what is one of the three great rivers of the world.
