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Urban Intervention Presentations – May 11

What might happen at Seattle Center when Memorial Stadium goes away?  Are there imaginative and unique uses for a large urban open space?  What is the Jelly Bean and why is it floating next to the Space Needle? Join us on Friday, May 11, at Intiman Playhouse for presentations by the finalists of Urban Intervention: The Howard S. Wright Design Ideas Competition for Public Space, a competition, which seeks to explore the future of Seattle Center and public space. There is a no-host reception at 6:30pm and finalist presentations at 7pm.

Selected by a jury of internationally recognized design and local civic leaders from over one hundred design ideas submitted from around the world, the three finalists visited Seattle in April for several packed days of learning to further develop their ideas. On May 11, the three teams will make their final presentations to the public at Intiman Playhouse.

May 11 also signals the opening of an exhibit of the finalist and commendation award winners and other inspiring entries.  The exhibit will run May 11 – June 30 in the lobby of the Intiman Playhouse.

Free advance tickets for this event are available via Ticketmaster (http://bit.ly/urbantix) or at the KeyArena Box Office, located on the West Plaza at Seattle Center (open Monday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm).  Tickets will also be available at the door of the Playhouse on May 11, while supplies last. Learn more at  http://www.seattlecenter.com/ AND www.thenextfifty.org/urbanintervention

WATCH: PREVIEW THE FINAL PRESENTATIONS at http://urbanintervention.aiaseattle.org/finalists

THE FINALISTS:   ABF (France) for their design, In-Closure.  The design envisions an interactive wall around a forested landscape that is both flexible and dynamic, embracing social life in the city at multiple scales. KoningEizenberg Architecture + ARUP (United States) for their design, Park. The design organizes the disparate elements of the Seattle Center site and program into a sustainable and coherent landscape. It offers a mastery of the immediate and physical and programmatic challenges facing Seattle Center. PRAUD (United States) for their design, Seattle Jelly Bean. The design is highly imaginative, and suggests a new kind of icon for the 21st century, an atmospheric and interactive cloud that is tethered both literally and figuratively to the site below.

THE JURY:  the six-member jury included August de los Reyes, designer, writer, and educator (Palo Alto, CA); Gene Duvernoy, president of Forterra, formerly Cascade Land Conservancy (Seattle, WA); Tom Leader, principal of award winning landscape architecture firm Tom Leader Studio (Berkeley, CA); Mia Lehrer, founder of landscape architecture firm Mia Lehrer+Associates (Los Angeles, CA); Rick Lowe, celebrated public artist (Houston, TX); and Patricia Patkau, founding partner in the firm of Patkau Architects (Vancouver, B.C., Canada).

ABOUT THE DESIGN COMPETITION:  in the spirit of the 1962 World’s Fair, Seattle Center and AIA Seattle invited multidisciplinary design teams to compete in an international design ideas competition to re-envision a nine-acre site in the heart of Seattle Center and use it to explore innovation in public space in the coming century. Design ideas are meant to harness Seattle’s history of innovation and civic engagement to inspire the next generation of great public spaces and connect interaction and innovation to meet the challenges of the future. The competition is sponsored by AIA Seattle, Seattle Center and Seattle Center Foundation/ The Next Fifty, and funded by the Grousemont Foundation. It honors long-term civic leader Howard S. Wright, who took a simple sketch on a napkin and created a landmark building known around the world, the icon of Seattle, the Space Needle.