A group of graduate students from the Georgia Institute of Technology took home top honors at the 22nd Annual ULI-Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition for the redevelopment plan of a downtown Seattle site.
The winning team of Noah Stogner, Grace Kunst, Arthur Santos Miranda, Vivian Lin and Brooke Blankenship designed Meander, a mixed-use, mixed-income project aimed at addressing the challenges posed by the post-pandemic urban environment, social inequality and climate change. The Georgia Tech team, pictured, was aided with input from King County, Washington, and the city of Seattle.
The competition jury, chaired by Jeff Baxter from developer Cityvolve, chose Meander from a pool of nearly 60 entries for its unique circulation concept, mid-rise building design and its all-in approach to mass timber construction.
“While mass timber is still in its early stages, the team was well-versed and researched on the subject matter, presenting an aspirational, yet achievable, project,” Baxter said in a statement.
The winners received a $50,000 prize from an endowment funded by Gerald D. Hines, the late founder of the Hines real estate company and a longtime ULI leader. The other three finalists were teams from the University of Texas at Austin, University of Maryland and an additional team from Georgia Tech in Atlanta. They received $10,000 each.