Play with Your City 2019: Reimagining Lady

Play With Your City 2019: Reimagining Lady is a design competition sponsored by the Columbia Design League. The competition invites architects, landscape architects, designers and artists to reimagine an underutilized three-block corridor crossing through several urban precincts in the heart of downtown Columbia, South Carolina's capital city.

The Lady Street corridor, identified by the Gehl Institute as a prime location for introducing 'urban stickiness' and a key pedestrian connection between urban districts, runs from Main Street west to Lincoln Street in the heart of the historic Congaree Vista. While both ends are vibrant, the pedestrian experience between them is fraught with challenges. Assembly Street, a 6-lane thoroughfare, effectively separates Main Street from the Congaree Vista. Across Assembly, heading toward the Vista, a block of surface parking dotted with single-story buildings is bleak. Entrants are challenged to consider temporary or permanent interventions to improve the pedestrian experience along the Lady Street Corridor. Solutions that incorporate and blur the distinctions between architecture, landscape design, urban design and art installation are encouraged. Entrants may work alone, but multi-disciplinary design teams are encouraged.

The winning entry will receive a $5,000 cash prize and shall be constructed for $20,000 as a total construction budget. Entry fee is $125.00. Submissions should include a summary of the idea including proposed construction (800 words or less) and up to 20 conceptual images (drawings, 3D renderings or visuals) in PDF format. All documentation should be formatted to 8.5 x 11 size in PDF format with a maximum file size of 10MB. Jury review will occur in May 2019, with winner notification and announcement in late May 2019. For questions, contact Betsy Newman, Columbia Design League's Reimagining Lady chair, at [email protected].