Portal to the Point Design Competition Aimed at Generating Innovative Ideas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The premise for a Pittsburgh-based design competition is simple, yet unusual. There will be no winners or losers. In fact, nothing might ever be built.

But, there will be new ideas.

Marlon Blackwell is a member of one of five multidisciplinary creative teams selected to participate in Portal to the Point: A Design Ideas Exploration. The teams will focus on public art and design at Point State Park, the most visible landmark in Pittsburgh.

About 40 firms from across the country were invited to submit proposals. The final five were selected based on an evaluation of the merits of their proposals and how they’d approach this project, as well as their professional track record, Blackwell said.

Blackwell’s firm is the leader of an impressive team that also includes Kendall Buster, a nationally renowned sculptor and a professor in the department of sculpture and extended media at Virginia Commonwealth University; Guy Nordenson and Associates, a structural engineering firm in New York; dlandstudio of Brooklyn, N.Y., led by principal landscape architect and architect Susannah Drake; and Renfro Design Group, an architectural lighting design firm founded by Richard Renfro in New York.

Blackwell is a Distinguished Professor and head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. His firm, Marlon Blackwell Architect, is based in Fayetteville.

Blackwell has worked previously with Nordenson, who was the structural engineer for his Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion, located in 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park, which opened in June 2010 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. A piece of site-specific artwork by Buster, the emerald green fiberglass and steel Stratum Pier, is also part of the museum’s art and nature park. Buster and Nordenson were also both guest lecturers on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the school’s annual lecture series last year. Renfro graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1979 with a Bachelor of Architecture.

The selection of the five creative teams for the Portal to the Point design exploration project was made from North American architects, landscape architects, designers and artists invited to submit their qualifications. The other four teams are:

• MAYA Design of Pittsburgh (Dutch MacDonald); and The Gray Circle.

• Scape/Landscape Architecture of New York (Kate Orff); and The Living.

• Weiss/Manfredi of New York (Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi); Magnusson Klemencic Associates; Green Shield Ecology; and Mark Dion, an artist currently working on a permanent installation for the University of Arkansas.

• wHY Architecture of Culver City, Calif. (Kulapat Yantrasast); Reed Hilderbrand; and WET Design.

“We’ve put together a collaborative, multidisciplinary team,” Blackwell said of his group. “We’re the largest team, but we’re the team that, we believe, can make the kind of comprehensive strategy for really reinvigorating the Portal to the Point as a more significant feature.”

After touring the project site in August, all teams are working toward an Oct. 12 design deadline.

This “idea generation project” is funded by Colcom Foundation, whose mission includes “intervening in the urban landscape in positive ways,” said Paul Rosenblatt, a principal with Springboard Design and the project adviser. Colcom Foundation wanted to look at some of the most important places in the city, starting with Point State Park. Rosenblatt said that, rather than build something or tie things to a construction budget, Tim Inglis, the president of the foundation board, wanted to develop ideas “to generate some fresh perspective on that place, which is kind of visionary.” The Colcom Foundation was established in 1996 by the late Cordelia S. May, a dedicated conservationist.

Inglis contacted the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, which often is involved in such projects and brings together stakeholders. That group enlisted Springboard Design, an architectural firm focused on museums and cultural facilities planning, with experience in developing master plans and working with organizations to find solutions.

Rather than trying to come up with solutions for this project, Springboard Design suggested that the generation and exploration of ideas was enough – that there didn’t need to be winners and losers.

“Ideas are powerful things,” Rosenblatt said.

Creating a design for this symbol of the city is not a traditional design dilemma. “It’s a blank slate,” he said. “They’re not solving a typical design problem. They’re creating a place where there is no place.”

This specific handful of design teams was chosen for a collective reputation of being “outside-the-box” thinkers “who are smart people and smart designers,” Rosenblatt said. They also know what to leave out in addition to what to include, which is essential in this case, so the current iconic nature of the park isn’t spoiled.

The 36-acre Point State Park is on a triangular tract carved by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which form the Ohio River. It’s a well-used recreational area, with activities such as cycling, skateboarding and rollerblading. It’s also a location for concerts and other events, including the 10-day Three Rivers Arts Festival and the Pittsburgh Three Rivers Regatta. The space is enhanced by a 100-foot-tall fountain, which operates daily in spring, summer and fall.

Designated as a National Historic Landmark, the park commemorates and preserves the strategic and historic heritage of the area during the French and Indian War. It is also home to the Fort Pitt Museum, the Fort Pitt Block House, plaques, markers and other features that interpret the history and significance of the site.

The Portal Bridge is an elevated highway thoroughfare that bisects the park north to south and leads to bridges that span the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. A pedestrian bridge across the Allegheny connects the park to a cultural area that includes the Pittsburgh Science Center, the Andy Warhol Museum and two sports arenas – Heinz Field and PNC Park. This design project is focused on the space underneath the overpass, and the surrounding area.

Blackwell said their proposal aims to develop more cohesion with the spaces in the park and with the relationship of the park to the riverside. The design goal is to make the place a more memorable experience for the citizens of Pittsburgh and its visitors.

The design challenge is to develop a more transformative work that could stand on its own as an iconic threshold into the park. The space is both a place to be and a place to move through, he said.

 “It’s a vision for what the park really could be. It’s also a kind of way to begin to speculate on how the Portal to the Point could become an iconic feature of the city – as iconic as the fountain,” Blackwell said, referring to the fountain at Point State Park, a symbol of Pittsburgh.

Rosenblatt said the park is known far beyond the region – particularly recognizable to football fans watching televised Pittsburgh Steelers games across the river at Heinz Field.

“Great cities of the world try to get the best creative talent involved in thinking about their future,” he said. And, by their makeup, cities benefit from multiple, diverse perspectives, with varied experiences and talents.

That’s what this design exploration exploits.

An exhibition of the designs will be held October 19-23 at the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. A public symposium with all the participants is planned for early 2012. A book that documents the process and the resulting designs will be available online, establishing an extended platform for the dissemination of information about the project.

“We’re guaranteed to have interesting things to look at and talk about,” Rosenblatt said. “A couple million people will look at that site with fresh eyes, and think about it and talk about it in ways that they haven’t before. Who knows where that will lead?”