Civic Exchange: Beyond the Kiosk

Competition Launch: June 2004
Original Brief: Download PDF

Appraising the complex conditions of Lower Manhattan's urban landscape, particularly after the 9/11 attacks, Van Alen Institute announced the Civic Exchange competition in June 2004. Organized in collaboration with the Architectural League and the Battery Park City Authority, the competition sought proposals for a prototypical interactive installation to be sited at the southern end of Battery Park City, and challenged designers to go "beyond the kiosk" - to imagine new ways of effectively organizing and delivering information to the public, and to provide a forum for diverse audiences to interact with and respond to the multiple future scenarios for Lower Manhattan.

The Civic Exchange competition was in large part a continuation of themes present in Van Alen Institute's earlier programs, including a design competition for a temporary pavilion on Wall Street (Culture Information Exchange, 1996) and a map of Ground Zero (New York New Visions, 2001). This competition, however, had a different structure from the Institute's previous competitions. Rather than extending an open call for finished proposals, the competition began with a Request for Expressions of Interest that generated responses from highly qualified professionals in the fields of design, architecture and new media. A jury composed of designers, educators, and public officials evaluated their submissions and short listed four teams, each of which was provided with a $10,000 stipend and an opportunity to refine their proposal and incorporate feedback arising from frequent exchanges with the jury. The competition sponsors elected to use this two-step process in order to provide top-level multidisciplinary design teams with guaranteed funding and a forum for rigorous critique from the jury.

The four final proposals offered innovative ways of embedding information in objects, and suggested the diverse forms these objects may take in public space. The jury selected Antenna Design as the winner, recognizing their project's ability to creatively include seating, a space for gatherings, easy access to multiple levels of information, and energy efficiency.