EDRA Great Places Awards Categories
Place Design
Place Design awards recognize placemaking projects that enrich people and communities and address needs of a diversity of users. Submissions can feature projects of various types; and scales, encompassing individually-built elements or cohesive groups
of environments working together as a unit. Projects can be newly built, or result from the reuse of existing buildings and facilities. They range in scales from local streets to civic boulevards, community parks to regional greenways, and building
interior to clusters of buildings and spaces. They may be the product of traditional design discipline, non-profits operating in the design of the built environment on behalf of a community, or Community Design Centers. Projects of design courses
and academic design and research centers in collaboration with students should be submitted under the Place Research category.
Projects must have been completed within the last five years but have been in existence for a sufficient period of time to enable assessment of how well the design responds to user needs. The written statement should address the
impact of the
project and it is expected that imagery provided as project documentation will also constitute evidence of how the project responded to people’s needs and contributed to the experience of place.
To maintain anonymity in judging, no names of entrants or collaborating parties or any link to a dedicated website may appear in any part of the submissions except in a separate electronic file entitled “Credits.”. Location and identity of projects
can be disclosed.
What issues does the jury consider?
Designs must contribute to the creation of places recognizable and distinctive within a larger fabric of relationships—they should help improve their setting by advancing a larger vision, healing a broken relationship, or retrofitting new qualities
and uses to address past design failures.
Designs submitted should involve a place that is meaningful to a community, consider an issue of social, cultural, or ecological importance, or demonstrate how the design is configured to serve a broader constituency
and provide enduring benefits.
Submissions should illustrate the potential to enhance the quality of life of a wide range of user-groups, especially those traditionally underserved by designers. Submissions should address the design project context and significance; the design
project process — illustrating response to human-needs research, human perceptions, citizen participation; relation of process to design outcomes; and both the focused and broader impact of the design project.
Submit to Place Design
Place Planning
Place planning awards any plan generated (but not necessarily built or implemented) within the past five years that makes proposals for the future use, future management, or future design of a place
—including master plans,
management and community development plans, vision documents, or charrette proposals, as long as people-place consideration and well- being is a central focus of the plan/process. Plans can operate at a range of scales,
from a specific area, such as a cluster of buildings, a campus or neighborhood, to a region. They can consider a variety of issues, such as urban design, preservation, environmental engineering, landscape ecology planning, transportation, accessibility,
community development, facilities programming, and community visioning Plans must have been sponsored by an external organized entity— such as a public agency, community group, or private business or institution. Plans should be available for
public review and input, but they need not have received official approval.
To maintain anonymity in judging, no names of entrants or collaborating parties or any link to a dedicated website may appear in any part of the submissions except in a separate electronic file entitled “Credits.” Location and identity of projects
can be disclosed. Failure to submit anonymous applications or uncompleted submissions will result in disqualification.
What issues does the jury consider?
Plans should address the context of how specific places or activities operate within a larger fabric of spatial, functional, economic, political, environmental, and
cultural relationships. Plans should involve places of public, environmental,
or social significance, consider issues of social and environmental importance, and/
or be configured to expand the constituency for a place especially to those groups that are often underrepresented in mainstream planning processes.
Plans should indicate clear, relevant and innovative methods/processes. They should incorporate effective strategies for participation and communication amongst stakeholders, involving affected constituencies in formulating the plan and conveying
the plan’s significance to those whose involvement and commitment will be necessary for achieving the plan goals and objectives. Even if the plan goals have not yet been realized, the planning process should have demonstrable outcomes that indicate
progress towards achieving the stated outcomes. They should result in specific design, management, or policy initiatives; broaden and strengthen the constituency for the place; attract additional resources to the place; or enhance the discussion
about or perception of the place. The emphasis of an entry should be to clearly describe the process that led to the final plan.
Even if the plan goals have not yet been realized, the planning process should have demonstrable outcomes that indicate progress towards achieving
the stated outcomes. They should result in specific design, management, or policy initiatives;
broaden and strengthen the constituency for the place; attract
additional resources to the place; or enhance the discussion about or perception of the place. The emphasis of an entry should be to clearly describe the process that led to the
final plan.
Submit to Place Planning
Place Research
All types of research about the design and use of people-centered places completed within the past five years can be entered — including (but not limited to) projects that:
- Document the physical, emotional, or perceptual experience of places or landscapes
- Employ evaluations of the use or management of recent projects or established settings
- Introduce novel approaches to studying place that are relevant to environment-behavior explorations
- Deal with pressing, timely issues and conditions of place
- Are based upon cultural history of a place or research on place-based sustainable practices, among many others that are place-relevant, and yield significant outcomes.
What issues does the jury consider?
Research projects should consider the relationship between existing or proposed physical form and human activity or experience. They should enrich our understanding
of how people interact with places from a behavioral, social, cultural, or ecological perspective; how people experience places; or processes through which places are conceived, designed, occupied, and managed. Projects should consider places
of public, social or cultural importance — such as market places, plazas, parks, squares and streets; campuses, religious, or commercial facilities; or offices, special housing facilities, or extended development patterns.
Research should demonstrate innovation and submissions should describe how the project breaks new ground. Projects should have broad applicability, informing design practice or teaching. The research methods, findings, and implications should be clearly
documented and communicated. Projects should be clearly grounded in the context of recent literature and practice; they can revisit previous research, confirming, extending, or challenging earlier findings.
Submit to Place Research
Place Book
Any book published in the last five years advancing the critical understanding of place or design of exceptional environments can be entered.
The book may be primarily scholarly, practical, literary, critical, or visual. The book 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 three years. They may not be re-edited or be re-released versions of older works.
What issues does the jury consider?
Books should be primarily about the experience, design, or understanding of place. They may be analytic, descriptive, documentary, or practice oriented. They may be about particular places; about people’s relationship to place, or about the qualities
of place as an area of study. They may be edited volumes or individually authored works. The book should illustrate a mature research agenda that is informed by place-people centered theories and literature, communicates a sound approach, and
informs of compelling outcomes/findings. The methodology used must be appropriate for the focus of the book, and demonstrate the refined realization of a stated research agenda, with perspective, theory, or findings that are applicable in the
future practice of place-based design, planning, or research, and these must engage with and contribute to existing themes in the literature on place.
Submit to Place Book
Place Art
Place Art Award projects that use art as a primary means of exploring people-place relationships–current, historic, contested, imagined, etc.– and the immediate or more far-reaching environmental and societal issues impacting those relationships.
These may take form as a temporary, pop-up, or more permanently installed or staged place art intervention, exhibition, event, or program that’s made to socially activate a place and convey, uncover, disrupt, challenge, or transform its
socio-environmental dynamics, conditions and meanings.
An emphasis on art as a tool of community placemaking, engagement, and social change means Place Art projects will often engage publics as collaborators and co-creators.
Place Art projects must have been completed–installed/staged/performed– within the last five years and have been in existence for a sufficient period of time to enable documenting and assessing of their impact on the people and public space(s)
engaged.
What issues does the jury consider?
Place Art entries should be artistic interpretations of places and their people-place interrelationships involving such things as a place’s told and untold stories, histories and memories, its challenges, hopes and desires, and its future imaginings
and vision.
The submitted works should demonstrate how the arts act to catalyze meaningful positive change in a place in one or multiple ways such as: by strengthening or enabling awareness and expression of people-place connectivity and a community’s connection
with a place; by fostering greater interhuman and intercultural social interaction; by fostering social and cultural inclusion and place belonging; by enabling and honoring multi-cultural creativity and expression in public places;
by educating a broader audience about a particular place; by advocating for a place’s safeguarding or transformation; by emboldening and empowering publics to engage in impactful placemaking that reflects and fortifies their identities,
needs and desires; by affirming diverse peoples’ right to inclusive public spaces.
Submit to Place Art
