Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm and EDRA, the Environmental Design Research Association, in cooperation with Metropolis Magazine announce the twelfth annual Great Places Awards (formerly EDRA/Places Awards) for Place Design, Planning and Research.

Unique in the ever-expanding universe of award programs, our concern is for good places and how people inhabit them.

The Great Places Awards seek entries of exemplary work, inviting participation from a range of design and research disciplines, recognizing projects whose significance extends beyond any one profession or field. Projects should emphasize a link between research and practice, demonstrating how an understanding of human interaction with place can inspire design.

Submission requires no more than a 500 word statement addressing specific features of your work.  Detailed submission requirements are listed here in the full awards call.

The deadline for entries for the 2009 Great Places Awards is February 9, 2009. The awards jury will be held February 27-28, 2009 at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, with winners announced the week following. Official presentations will be made in May 2009 at the EDRA40 conference in Kansas City, Missouri. Winning projects will be announced in Metropolis and on the Places website, with full write-ups and commentary published in the Fall 2009 issue of Places.

The 2009 Great Places Awards Jury

• David Lake, Lake/Flato Architects
• Elizabeth MacDonald, City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley
• Rahul Mehrotra, Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Lawrence Speck, Page Sutherland Page
• William Sullivan, Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The Program

The Great Places Awards are unique among programs that recognize professional and scholarly excellence in environmental design. They are distinguished by their interdisciplinary focus, concern for human factors in the design of the built environment, and a commitment to promoting links between design research and practice.

We invite participation from the full breadth of environmental design and related research activities, including architecture, landscape architecture, planning, urban design, interior design, lighting design, graphic design, environmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography and the physical sciences.

Each year we assemble a jury with diverse backgrounds in design, research, teaching and practice. The jury evaluates how each project, no matter what the discipline, addresses the human experience of well-designed places. Special attention is paid to the transferability of research about human experience of place into design and planning practice. The jury will select six winners from three categories: place design, place planning, place research, and a book prize.

Past winners have appeared in Places 12.1, 13.1, 14.1, 15.1, 16.1, 16.3, 17.3, 18.3, and 19.3. For more information about the awards program, or to obtain additional entry forms, prospective entrants are encouraged to visit www.places-journal.org and/or www.edra.org.

Submissions are accepted in four categories

Place Research. All types of research about the design and use of places can be entered, including (but not limited to) projects that document the form or perception of places or landscapes; evaluate the use or management of recent projects or established settings; or provide background for specific designs, plans or sustainable practices

Place Planning. Any plan that makes proposals for the future use, management or design of a place can be entered — including master plans, specific plans or elements, management plans, vision documents, or charrette proposals. Plans must have been sponsored by an organized entity (such as a public agency, community group, or private business or institution), though they need not have received official approval.

Place Design. Any design project completed within the last five years (but long enough to assess how well it functions for its users) can be entered. Projects can consist of individual structures, spaces or elements, or groups that work together as a unit. They can involve the design of something new or the reuse of existing resources. The scale may be large or small Each project should account for its relation to the larger environment of which it is a part.

Book Award. Any recently published book advancing the critical understanding of place and design of exceptional environments may be entered. The book may be primarily scholarly, practical, literary or visual. However, it must be currently available to the public through bookstores, commercial websites, or direct purchase from a publisher, Books may not be self-published. They must have been published for the first time in the last two years. They may not be re-edited or be re-released versions of older works.