In its competition to help rebuild areas hit hardest by Superstorm Sandy and to protect them from future storms, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has narrowed the finalists down to 10 architectural teams, Crain’s reported.
The finalists in the competition, called “Rebuild by Design,” included local firms WXY Architecture + Urban Design, Interboro Partners and HR&A Advisors, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his former protégé Bjarke Ingels, Philadelphia-based Laurie Olin, Brooklyn-based SCAPE and Sasaki Associates of Boston.
Each of the architectural teams is partnered with a major design school, proving the exercise is a teachable moment. Within the competition, design teams are being asked to focus on the most affected and most vulnerable areas of the Sandy-affected region within Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.
Rebuild by Design’s goals are to develop systems that help affected areas increase their resilience to hurricanes and other destructive storms as well as to implement selected proposals with both public and private funding.
“The projects that come out of this competition will save lives and protect communities in this region,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.
When the Rebuild by Design competition was first announced in June, HUD received more than 140 proposals from 15 countries. [Crain’s] – James Comtois