Competition Launch: August 2011

Parks for the People: A Student Competition to Reimagine America’s National Parks conceived new ideas for America’s most spectacular public places—its national parks—by using design as a catalyst to creatively consider their connections to people and their role as revered natural, social, and cultural destinations. The competition represented a collaborative initiative of Van Alen Institute, the U.S. National Park Service, and the National Parks Conservation Association, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

As an introductory project of Designing the Parks—a public-private partnership to promote well-designed public parks in America—the Parks for the People competition invited student and faculty teams to build a common foundation of design principles for these extraordinary sites as the U.S. National Park Service embarked upon a new century of park design. Participating student and faculty teams worked with park administrators to create model solutions for seven park sites in each geographic region of the U.S., and developed these design ideas as paradigms to strengthen sites across the National Park System.

FINDING COMMON GROUND

Site

Nicodemus National Historic Site

Nicodemus, KS

School

City College of New York

Barnard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture

A PARK FOR THE PEOPLE

Site

Hopewell Furnace

National Historic Site

Elverson, PA

School

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey School of Environmental and Biological Sciences