Loop PDX: The Winner + Finalists

See the winner of the Yeon Center and Design Week Portland’s competition to design a 6-mile pedestrian/bike greenway loop through downtown Portland.

The UO John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape and Design Week Portland are pleased to announce the winner of the Loop PDX design competition to bring to life the city’s proposed 6-mile “green loop,” a bike/pedestrian greenway linking the east and west side neighborhoods of the central city.

Untitled Studio’s “Portland Living Loop”

Untitled Studio is a Portland-based collaboration of Hiroshi Kaneko, William Smith, Dustin Locke, Courtney Ferris and Adam Segal. They have won $20,000 to further develop their scheme.

The four other competing finalists were:

1. Alta Planning in collaboration with Greenworks, Portland, Oregon

2. SWA Group, Sausalito, California

3. Peter Bednar, Prague, Czech Republic

4. DHM Design, CH2M Hennebery Eddy architects, and Tad Savinar, Carbondale, Colorado and Portland, Oregon

Proposal collections:

• Finalist propsals
• Semifinalist propsals
• Submitted propsals

Proposed by the Portland Planning Bureau in the Central City 2035 Plan, the loop is conceived to connect the Pearl District/Old Town, West End, Cultural District, PSU, South Auditorium, South Waterfront, OMSI, Central Eastside and Lloyd District with a single parkway that would cross the Willamette River at the Broadway Bridge and the Tillicum Crossing.

Loop PDX drew 38 proposals by leading professional firms, upstart shops, activist groups, and students from across the West, along with entries from as far away as Thailand. The competition was sponsored by the Portland Bureau of Planning, Portland Trailblazers/Rose Quarter, Key Development, Beam Development, and Joan Childs and Jerry Zaret.

The finalists offer a wide array of approaches and visions:

Portland-based Alta Planning/Greenworks proposed a series of different types of pathways, from painted tracks to bicycle couplets, all occupying existing streets and linking playgrounds and public spaces.

SWA Group from Sausalito, CA would deploy everything from boldly patterned paintings to festivals to gradually bring to life “enriched streets” of paths connecting pocket parks.

Untitled Studio from Portland proposed a strategy of “rings of ownership” of block-by-block partnerships between the city and private property owners, periodically marked by train-trestle arbors.

Peter Bednar of Prague offered a kit of parts of street furniture, moveable planters, painted walls, and other easily made moves that could incrementally lead to more permanent features like lighting and tree-lined, center-lane parkway.

DHM Design, CH2m, Hennebery Eddy architects, and Tad Savinar envisioned a bold forested greenway that could eventually become a “Park Blocks” for the Central Eastside but could also begin with designated corridors of plantings and green walls.

Loop PDX Design Jury:

• Paula Scher, designer, Pentagram, New York
• Gina Ford, director of urban studio, Sasaki, San Francisco
• Michelle Delk, director of landscape, Snohetta, New York
• Mike Lydon, Street Plans Collective and co-author of Tactical Urbanism, New York
• Andrew Howard, cofounder of Better Block and principle with Team Better Block