WINNERS OF DAWNTOWN 2008: Miami International Architecture Competition

The awards ceremony of DAWNTOWN 2008 was held at the Miami-Dade College Chapman Center and was sponsored by the Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA). DawnTown is an international architecture competition for a new waterworks building in Downtown Miami and its mission is to help tell the story of Downtown Miami's demographic, cultural, and architectural transformation to the world.

1)   Miami DDA’s Dawntown Award: PULSE

Name of the winner: Helen Pierce, Texas, USA

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

Mikkel Thisted is a young danish architect currently in the process of setting up an architectural office in Copenhagen, Denmark. Graduated in the summer of 2008 from the Aarhus School of Architecture in Aarhus, Denmark, Mikkel has worked on a variaty of open architectural competitions after finishing his studies - one of which earned him a second prize just months after finishing his studies. The competition for the conversion of the existing Miami Waterworks building in downtown Miami. During his studies at the school of architecture, Mikkel earned several prizes in collaboration with different fellow students. Before graduating, Mikkel worked as an intern at world reknown dutch design company MVRDV in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.  Where he worked on several competitions among which the project for a social housing project in Logrono, Spain published in A+U is the most well-known.

 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.

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.

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.