Imagining Penn Center: National Student Design Competition

ends Sep 15, 2006
Imagining Penn Center National Student Design Competition
This competition is meant to generate ideas about the revitalization of Penn Center, one of Philadelphia's major Center City civic spaces, orginally conceived by Philadelphia's renowned former Planning Director, Edmund N. Bacon.

Penn Center is a complicated site, built in the 1960s along with a series of nearby, connected civic spaces.

It sits across from City Hall at the head of the business district, housing a regional train station, office towers, public plazas, and an underground concourse.

It is a business, civic, and tourist destination at the heart of Center City.

Today, despite its central location, Penn Center is highly underutilized by the public.

Competition entrants are challenged to build sustainable concepts for shaping Penn Center's future, understanding the layers of history behind the genesis of the site.

Entrants should respond to the successes and failings of the space, as well as to changes in usage of the urban landscape over time, creating new functions and design features, focusing on today's user.

Designs should be visionary and yet functional, re-enlivening Penn Center in the spirit of Ed Bacon's work.