11th Street Bridge Park Design Competition Down to Four Teams

• May 27, 2014
• 1 Comment

by Lark Turner

An early vision for the park. By Ed Estes.

The finalists in a nationwide call for designs for the 11th Street Bridge Park have been narrowed down to four teams.

Plans have been in the works for over a year to turn three concrete piers into one elevated park connecting Anacostia and Navy Yard. The goal of the project is to create a connecting design with an appeal similar to that of New York City’s High Line.

A total of 41 design proposals came in for the park, and a committee narrowed those down to six a little over a month ago. UrbanTurf has learned that the finalists were recently narrowed down further to the following four teams:

• Balmori Associates/Cooper, Robertson & Partners/Guy Nordenson Associates;
• OLIN/OMA/Arup;
• Stoss Landscape Urbanism/Howeler + Yoon Architecture/Robert Silman Associates;
• Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT) /NEXT Architects/Magnusson Klemencic Associates

Scott Kratz, who’s heading up the project with the help of the Office of Planning — and trying to raise the $40 million it’ll take to build it — told UrbanTurf on Tuesday that he was excited about the four finalists.

“We are thrilled with the selection of architects, landscape architects and structural engineers — truly some of the best firms in the country,” he said in an email.

The winning team among the four finalists will be announced in October.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/11th_street_bridge_design_narrowed_down_to_four_finalists/8534

1 Comment

1. skidrowedc@gmail.com said at 2:31 pm on Wednesday May 28, 2014:

   My main comment: Let’s stop the High Line references: it’s a losing proposition which will only hurt this great, visionary effort.

   First off, comparisons to the High Line set a standard which will never be met.  Not only is DC simply not NYC (for better and for worse, of course), but the projects are very different.  Secondly, at this point, the High Line’s principal effect seems to be to catalyze “superprime” development (that is, condos, restaurants, and shops aimed at “the 1%”) on the previously-relatively-affordable Far West Side.  It’s hard to imagine the 11th St Bridge Park having that effect.  But it’s easy to imagine concerns about the potential for that introducing (additional) distrust into the public process.

   The Promenade Plantier in Paris, the 20-year-older cousin of the High Line, offers a somewhat more hopeful comparison, in that it runs through less-fashionable areas of eastern Paris, and the development it has catalyzed is mostly affordable housing.  But even there, the comparison is quite limited.  Bridges over rivers and bridges over cities just don’t have that much in common. 

   Thus it is that Scott Kratz cites the Providence River Bridge park in Rhode Island as precedent.  Quite right.  The media should follow suit.