2010 Steedman Traveling Fellowship Competition

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis is accepting registrations for the 2010 Steedman Traveling Fellowship Competition.
Granted since 1925, the biennial Steedman Fellowship is open to citizens of all countries with no more than eight years experience following receipt of a professional degree in architecture. The competition carries a $30,000 first-place award to support study and research abroad - one of the largest such awards in the United States.
The 2010 competition will consider the relationship between urban environment's and the river's edge, specifically the relationship of the City of St. Louis to the Mississippi River. Since 1967, Eero Saarinen's majestic Gateway Arch has commanded St. Louis, occupying the banks of the Mississippi. Commemorating Thomas Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory, the Arch stands on the grounds of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and symbolizes American settlement westward, hence why it is called the 'Gateway to the West.'
While the Mississippi was, indeed, a threshold to Western American settlement, the river itself has always been, and remains, the 'gateway' to the Gulf of Mexico - and thus, by sea, to the rest of the world. What might then be an equivalent to the Gateway to the West for the north-south axis of America? Not in the form of a singular monument, but in the complex ways in which the cities of St. Louis and East St. Louis can respond to and interact with their majestic river.
To address this question, the selected site for the 2010 Steedman Competition encompasses a large, complex territory, from the confluence of the rivers to the north to the bridge crossings south of the Gateway Arch. Thus, an urban design and a landscape design sensibility are required in addition to that of an architect. Considerations of infrastructure, topographic transformation, environmental stewardship, and built form must be creatively intertwined on behalf of enlarging the range of human uses and experiences at the boundaries of city and river.
Cities seeking to increase the qualities inherent to urban living, rescue land from industrial obsolescence, or provide an alternative to peripheral sprawl turn to their waterfronts more than ever, and for a broader array of reasons. Along these waterfronts, it seems possible to accommodate the changing needs of today's urban dweller, as modern societies continue their millennial shift from industrial-based economies (and their spatial demands) to service- and lifestyle-based economies and their requirements.
Notes jury chair Alex Krieger, chair of the Department of Urban Planning & Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design: "Urban waterfronts are unrivaled in their potential for providing for an exceptional or celebratory enterprise. Imagine the Sydney Opera House, or the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, or the neo-classical customhouses along Shanghai's Bund not juxtaposed against each city's major body of water? Much of contemporary Chicago's identity and self-image, not to mention wealth, comes from its spectacular 20-mile long facade stretching along Lake Michigan.
"Humanity, it seems, delights in and finds inspiration at waterfront settings, but increasingly asks more of them than spectacle alone".
The competition brief will ask participants to propose and portray what that "more" might be along this portion of the Mississippi River.
The registration deadline is February 28, 2010. The competition brief will be published on March 1, and the deadline for entries is April 11. Winners will be announced on May 3.
The Steedman Fellowship is supported by an endowment - given to the Sam Fox School's College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design - in honor of James Harrison Steedman, who received a degree in mechanical engineering from Washington University in 1889. The memorial was established by Steedman's widow, Mrs. Alexander Weddel, and Steedman's brother, George.
The jury:
Alex Krieger, Chair
Marilyn Taylor
Charles Waldheim
Dorothee Imbert
Joan Busquets

more: http://www.steedmancompetition.com/2010_Competition/

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