WINNERS OF DAWNTOWN 2008: Miami International Architecture Competition

DawnTown is an international architecture competition for a new waterworks building in Downtown Miami. DawnTown's mission is to help tell the story of Downtown Miami's demographic, cultural, and architectural transformation to the world, and to bring creative ideas in urban design to Downtown Miami. The awards ceremony was held at the Miami-Dade College Chapman Center on and featured the inaugural presentation of the DawnTown Award, sponsored by the Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA).

1)   Miami DDA’s Dawntown Award: PULSE
 
Name of the winner: Helen Pierce, San Antonio, Texas
Website: http://www.pierceworkshop.com/
 
• Helen Pierce graduated from Drexel University School of Architecture in Philadelphia in 1994. She formed PierceWorkshop after moving to San Antonio in 2008. She has worked with design firms in Delaware, Philadelphia and Phoenix. Projects she has designed have won numerous AIA awards and she has placed in national and international design competitions and recently was a finalist as Lead project Designer (with a Phoenix design firm) in the Flip-a-Strip design competition sponsored by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been exhibited at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, The AIA convention in Chicago and Dutch Modern Housing Conference in the Netherlands.
 
2)   Second Prize: WATER DROP
 
Name of the winner: Mikkel Thisted, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Website:  http://www.mikkelthisted.dk/
 
• 2008 Graduated from the Århus School of Architecture in July
• 2006/2007 August till February 2007, Internship at MVRDV in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
• 2006 Receives 2nd prize in the open competition "The Neighborhood Centre of the Future" in collaboration with a student of political science
• 2006 Exhibits 'BarCode Table" in Copenhagen, Denmark at the "Bella Centre", arranged by Designworks05
• 2005 Receives 2nd prize in the competition "Youth Housing of the Future" arranged by the Rotary Club
• 2005 Exhibits 'BarCode Table" in Aarhus, Denmark at "City Hall" arranged by Designworks05
• 2004 Receives 1st prize in the "Element 2004" competition arranged by the Danish design magazine "Bo Bedre"
• 2003 Admitted to the Aarhus School of Architecture
• 2003 Employed as a graphic designer at Denmark’s largest newspaper, "Jyllands-Posten", and continued employment while studying at the Aarhus   School of Architecture
• 2002 Graduate from "Aarhus Katedralskole", a Danish high school
• 1983 Born in Aarhus, Denmark
 
3)  Third Prize: LIVING FILTER
 
Name of the winner: Bryan Astheimer & Sarah Weidner Astheimer, London, UK
 
• Bryan Astheimer is an environmental designer with responsibilities for strategic environmental planning, conceptual design studies, design review and sustainable design research. Bryan works with the sustainability team in Buro Happold’s New York office where he focuses primarily on international masterplanning and high performance building projects. Currently, Bryan is working with Buro Happold’s London Infrastructure Group, practicing progressive drainage engineering. Prior to Buro Happold, Bryan worked at the Montgomery County Conservation District and was an Environmental Management Fellow with the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program in Annapolis, Maryland. Bryan received his MS in City and Regional Planning from Pratt Institute in 2006 where he concentrated his studies Urban Environmental Systems Management. He studied Forest Science and Watershed Management as an undergraduate student at The Pennsylvania State University.

Bryan’s interest in Environmental Design is derived from a strong commitment to building positive relationships between humans and nature. In practice, this interest has manifested itself in his graduate and undergraduate education, experience with innovative environmental organizations and projects, and, of course, his team’s “Living Filter” entry for the DawnTown 2008 ideas competition.
 
• Sarah Weidner Astheimer is a landscape and urban designer. She has an MLA (2005) from The University of Pennsylvania, where she was awarded the ASLA Honor Award for outstanding potential for contributions to the profession, and the Ian L. McHarg Prize for excellence in design that best exemplifies ecological ideals in contemporary and culturally pertinent ways. Sarah’s B.A. in The Growth and Structure of Cities is from Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges (2001), where she received the Bolton Senior Award for her thesis on National Identity and Architecture.
 
At Field Operations, Sarah has been an associate who has worked as the design project manager for the Freshkills Park project. Sarah has also worked as designer for the pool deck, which is the centerpiece of Project City Center, the multi-billion dollar casino/ hotel/ condominium complex in Las Vegas, the Open Space Master Plan for Columbia’s new Manhattanville campus in collaboration with SOM and Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and a variety of competitions. Sarah has worked as a fellow at Olin Partnership in Philadelphia, at Martha Schwartz Partners in London, and as an intern at Voith and Mactavish Architects, Philadelphia on a variety of civic and institutional projects.
 
Sarah’s professional experience is complemented by her work as an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania where she serves as studio juror, guest design critic, and teacher of core media courses that advance the development of students’ digital and visualization skills.
 
As a designer, Sarah is deeply committed to the potential for landscape architecture to transcend space creation, believing it has the potential to refigure social relationships and embody cultural identities on a variety of scales. Sarah’s student and professional projects cumulatively investigate three more specific, but related concepts: the reframing of iconic images of the landscape to give contemporary readings of place and identity; flexible circulatory systems as mechanisms of program creation; and the revealing of resiliencies through ecological strategies of sucessional growth, seasonal growth, and management.

The Miami Downtown Development Authority, founded in 1965, is a public-private, non-profit business organization that strives to develop Miami's downtown area.  Its mission is to make Downtown Miami the most livable urban center in the nation and strengthen its position as the international center for commerce, culture, and tourism. Through its own programs and services and partnership with the City of Miami and other governmental entities, Miami DDA is dedicated to making downtown a more livable community and improving the quality of life for employers, employees, residents, property owners, and visitors.