Emerging architects and designers from around the world see big possibilities for civic renewal on the vacant lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge.They’d connect it to staircases that would reach up through the soaring arch in the bridge’s central span to create viewing platforms high over the Cuyahoga River. They’d fill the bridge’s lower level with cafes and kiosks, art galleries, sporting venues, farmer’s markets, libraries or restaurants. And they’d build a Ferris wheel next to it.
Those are some of the ideas suggested in the 2012 Cleveland Design Competition, which attracted 164 entries from more than 20 countries around the world. An iconic presence on skyline, the Detroit-Superior bridge was built in 1918. Its lower level originally carried streetcars. In recent years, it has hosted the Ingenuity Festival and other temporary “pop-up” events. Organized by Cleveland architectural designers Michael Christoff and Bradley Fink, the design competition, now in its fifth year, issued the challenge to contribute to a rising civic debate over how to make more and better use of the spectacular but little-used lower level of the bridge.
Around the world, cities are turning old and neglected pieces of urban infrastructure — bridges, piers, rail paths —into parks, trails, recreation zones and other amenities. Cleveland could be next, if competitors in this year’s design competition have their way.
The annual competition, now in its fifth year, has challenged entrants to imagine new visions for Irishtown Bend in the Flats, a park in the city’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood, the Amtrak station on the city’s lakefront, and a new public K-12 school near Cleveland State University. With an annual budget of $24,000, the competition has been supported primarily since its beginning by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass. It also got financial help this year from the Bridge Project, a planning study co-sponsored by the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County Department of Public Works. The study, in turn, is supported by $75,000 from the Transportation for Liveable Communities Initiative of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, plus a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
[Read More...]