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Ph.D. students take honorable mention in North Campus design contest
(Mar 2008) A team of doctoral students from the School of Information and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning earned an honorable mention for their submission in the first Work/Play competition at the U-M, which aimed to find ways to make the University's North Campus more appealing.
Their project, "The Hub," proposed using data streams from sensors on campus and from online sources to illuminate pressure-sensitive bricks in intricate patterns on the North Campus diag.
In announcing their entry, Dean David Munson of the College of Engineering called The Hub an "ingenious, interactive installation designed as both a gathering place and an information hub at the center of the diag."
The Hub was the result of a creative collaboration among doctoral students Benjamin Congleton, Jina Huh, Paul Hartzog, and Jiang Yang of SI and Nicholas Senske of the Taubman College. The members will share $2,000 in prize money.
The contest winners were announced at the opening ceremony for the Penny and Roe Stamps Auditorium on the North Campus on March 27. Deans from the schools and colleges on North Campus participated in the event.
Munson described the purpose and genesis of the Work/Play competition. "When we North Campus deans look out our windows or into our classrooms, we see a lot of brilliant students and faculty hard at work. We are much less likely to see anyone engaged in play," he said.
"Yet learning the appropriate balance between work and play is part of the educational experience. A well-designed campus should provide everyone the opportunity to pursue intellectual growth and to interact informally with fellow students, faculty, and staff.
"Unfortunately, the design of North Campus supports work much more effectively than play -- which is, after all, an essential expression of the creative impulse that animates the work in all the North Campus units."
Teams were asked to design a new, inventive, and compelling destination at the heart of the North Campus that would result in a better equilibrium between work and play. The competition called for projects sensitive to the built and natural environments and that incorporated, promoted and/or celebrated sustainable design principles.
The contest offered $20,000 in prize money and a $500,000 project budget for the winning entry. In all, 143 students, faculty, and staff from across the University formed 31 teams and submitted proposals.
Jury members included the six North Campus deans, University Planner Sue Gott, University Architect Doug Hanna, and an architecture student. Due to the outstanding submissions, the WorkPlay jury found it could not choose one winner. Instead, the jury awarded $7,500 to the top two teams and is asking that members of the winning teams work with each other and a design professional to create a new design that, incorporating elements of both of their submissions, evolves into something altogether new and unified.
The first prize was awarded to the two submissions entitled "C'ing Energy" and "WorkPlay Ground." C'ing Energy works with the existing campus layout and is internally coherent with a focus on sustainable energy. WorkPlay Ground was cited for a pure sense of fun that engaged all North Campus units through architecture and engineering, with strong roots in the visual arts.
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Benjamin Congleton
Jina Huh
Paul Hartzog
Jiang Yang
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