Housing design winners - Brief Article

Real Estate Weekly, Feb 18, 2004

Winners for the New Housing, New York international design contest were announced last week by the City and the AIA New York Chapter.

In the first prize category: winner for the Manhattan site was Choi Law, an architect for the A.V.K. Group in Irving, Texas; Margery Perlmetter, principal of Arte NY, won for her Queens site design and the Brooklyn site winner was Beth Blostein, a partner at Blostein/Overly Architects and an assistant professor at The Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture.

First place prizes were $10,000, second place, $3,500 and third place, $1,500.

The competition focused on generating new ideas in affordable and sustainable housing design for housing production in New York City. Making the announcement were City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, joined by City Council Housing Committee Chair Madeline Provenzano, Land Use Committee Chair Melinda Katz, City University of New York representatives and members of The American Institute of Architecture New York Chapter.

The competition solicited proposals for housing designs for three specific blocks of New York City that were identified for contextual purposes and represent some of the unique challenges of housing design in the city. The three sites selected were a brownstone/ townhouse infill in Manhattan; a full, 4-sided block in Queens; and a large avenue, full block frontage area in Brooklyn.

The competition was initiated by the City Council in cooperation with The AIA New York Chapter and the City University of New York. It was developed in partnership with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Department of City Planning and the Department of Buildings. A co-sponsor of the competition is the New York State Association for Affordable Housing.