Pruitt Igoe Now Competition



Pruitt Igoe Now is an ideas competition launched by a non-profit organization of the same name, located in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. The subject is the 57-acre site of the long-mythologized Pruitt and Igoe housing projects -- a site whose future is intertwined with emerging ideas about urban abandonment, the legacy of modernism, brownfield redevelopment and land use strategies for shrinking cities. This competition seeks the ideas of the creative community worldwide: we invite individuals and teams of professional, academic, and student architects, landscape architects, urban planners, designers, writers, historians, and artists of every discipline to re-imagine the site and the relationship between those acres to the rest of the city.

March 2012 will mark the 40th anniversary of the demolition of the first of the Pruitt-Igoe high-rises, designed by architects, Helmuth, Yamasaki and Leinweber, who have long been blamed for the troubled legacy of these towers--problems that are now known to be the result of complex political and economic circumstances. Although later maligned by historians, the Pruitt and Igoe housing projects were the embodiment of modern architectural ideals for public housing, and as powerfully symbolic of St. Louis' urban renewal as the Gateway Arch would become. For forty years, the site of this complex has been largely untouched, and today the site is an overgrown brownfield forest. As countless other social housing projects across the country are torn down, and rebuilt in the idiom of new urbanism, the site of Pruitt-Igoe remains untouched. What is Pruitt-Igoe now? Can this site be liberated from a turbulent and mythologized past through re-imagination?

This call seeks bold ideas that re-invigorate the abandoned site: ideas from sources as diverse in media and background as possible. This competition imagines the site of Pruitt-Igoe as a frontier: the threshold between North St. Louis, which is showing signs of stabilization after decades of decline, and the new design for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.

Our jurors will select the first, second and third most inspiring proposals and award them $1,000, $750 and $500 respectively. A broad selection of entries will receive honorable mention and inclusion in an online gallery. In April 2012, a symposium on urban dwelling and creative intervention will be held at Portland State University; the advisory committee plans to curate all proposals, and exhibit these at the symposium. The advisory committee also plans to curate select competition submissions into a traveling exhibition that will tour beginning in Summer 2012, starting in St. Louis. The initial setting for display will be publicly accessible and either on or near the Pruitt-Igoe site itself.

More information: http://www.pruittigoenow.org

Last month, Pruitt-Igoe Now announced three winners, from 31 finalists (and nearly 350 entrants) in the competition.

And next week, those winners and finalists will be presented at a public exhibition in Old North St. Louis, complete with screening and a Q&A with the finalists. It'll take place Wednesday, July 25, from 6 to 9 at the offices of Old North St. Louis Restoration Group, 2700 N. 14th Street. The presentations will be hung there through the end of August.

Organizers hope it'll be the first of several showings of the presentations, which imagined new uses for the 33-acre site. The winning entry - "St. Louis Ecological Production Line" - would turn the site into a hub for tree and plant nurseries and aquaculture, with the goal of using other vacant land across the city to form a "green corridor."

For now, it's just an idea.

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Is this competition just meant to spur discussion or is there money to build something?

The Land That Time and Money Forgot
http://nymag.com/news/features/housing-projects-2012-9/

can we all sign a letter saying, 'Mr. Mckee you have screwed up on the Northside project a lot. Develop Pruitt Igoe similar to this plan, in an open and transparent manner and it'll restore some faith. -the vanguard'

Good find, Arch. Thanks for posting.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more response to his blog/idea. I'd love to spread this around, but I'm not much with social media.

This is so cool. Awesome idea. I think the one thing that is so often forgotten when discussing Pruitt Igoe is that the whole project replaced entire city blocks. Reconnecting the grid and building new homes and businesses is a fantastic idea that truly respects what the site once was.

Hello, Next STL, I'm new here! Arch city emailed me and let me know you were discussing the Pruitt Igoe project that I designed in graduate school, so I though I would join in the discussion! It's been interesting reading your thoughts! I though I would start out by discussing a criticism that onecity brought up, which is that the project should be of it's time (representing the zeitgeist).

First, I think most projects (but perhaps not all), should be more representative of their place than of their time. Most of the architecture I see in Arch. Record today could be anywhere, and it seems that cities all across the globe are slowly growing to look more alike, losing their distinctiveness, and I think that's sad. Most new architecture seems to be entirely about the individual architect's identity and making something new, and not about the identity of the place. In a large development such as the one I proposed, I think most of the architecture should say "I'm from St. Louis, so I emulate the traditions of St. Louis." Within that context, several of the buildings could be more "of their time," representing more of an individualistic architectural expression. Avant garde always seems to be best when set against a backdrop of well done traditional buildings anyways. A large collection of individualistic/avant garde architecture is just a cacophony.

Second, even architects that tend to be more Modern don't always follow the idea that architecture should be of it's time (in practice). David Chipperfield's new addition to the STL Art Museum certainly seems to be more representative of 1960 than 2012 (http://www.architectmagazine.com/Images ... 172591.jpg). It looks like it could even be based on 1930's Mies. Is Chipperfield wrong for doing this? If so, is he any worse than an architect who designs, say, an Art Deco building today, since it's precedents are also from the 30's? I don't think most people (non-architects) care about architectural taboos, but do care about beauty, a sense of place, and quality. Just a thought:)

The plans look beautiful. Goes to show when faux historic is done right it can be very effective in creating a sense of place. Until we are able to attract high quality modern infill, I would rather have something like this to reinforce Saint Louis's period architectural presence.

onecity wrote:

^These. If we're going to have historic infill, focus on craftsmans and bungalows. Until you have lived in endless blocks of them, you do not know how wonderful and varied they are. These are the kinds of houses we need around Pruitt Igoe and in St. Louis. They don't scream suburbs OR ancient inner city. They're fabulous inside, fabulous outside, and with a wide variety of styles having been built from 1900 to 1940 (a period that is *sorely* lacking in the metro - Kwood and Webster have the closest thing to this and the majority of those houses are kind of eh IMO). Bungalows, baby. On 45w x 160d lots backing an alley.

That would be great! As long as a mix of uses and a small amount of higher density was introduced, medium density could work very well on the site. This type of housing would also work well in a network of streets and blocks; you could easily take my master plan, make the lots wider in a significant portion of it, and add detached single-family housing. I own a 1921 craftsman in a neighborhood of craftsman houses, and I agree, it is wonderful!

Presbyterian, I don't believe McEagle has seen it. I attempted to contact McKee while I was working on the project, but was always unsuccessful. If someone has the connections to present it to him, that would be awesome!