Charlottesville: Identity & Design

This Prize hopes that acts of reflective making will open up the potential for a new understanding and a new expression of Charlottesville’s spirit of place and the power of public art in the 21st century.

Description
The 2018 BDA Prize [Charlottesville: Identity & Design] seeks proposals for a site-specific work of public art that will successfully embody the values and aspirations of a diverse community. We seek proposals from artists, architects, designers, and citizens that will offer ideas for an artistic, cultural, social, political, or ecological foundation that our community may build upon for the future.
The site for this year’s competition is the west end of Charlottesville’s downtown pedestrian mall, one of the longest pedestrian malls in the United States, designed by the acclaimed landscape architect Lawrence Halprin in 1976.
Charlottesville is not a neutral city in which to have this conversation. It has proven difficult to have a thoughtful “conversation”, in the sense of considered and civil discourse, in the wake of a summer of events noted for brutality, violence, and anger.
Neither is the west end of the Charlottesville Downtown Mall a neutral site – it overlaps the boundary of the now-lost Vinegar Hill neighborhood.
The site includes one block of the Downtown Mall. The site also includes what is today euphemistically called “Vinegar Hill Park”, an idea originally proposed by Lawrence Halprin. Today’s incarnation is a disappointing echo of that original idea, a park in name only, a pedistrianized palimpsest of a street once lined with minority-owned businesses.
Proposals may encompass the entire site area or any fraction thereof.
The goal of the BDA Prize and the Charlottesville: Identity & Design ideas competition is to foster community dialogue about design.
Entries are to serve as a catalyst for dialogue and discovery in our community, and will be exhibited publicly and discussed in open forums attended or led by members of the Charlottesville community, artists, designers, scholars, and our invited panel of jurors.
The BDA Prize hopes that acts of reflective making will open up the potential for a new understanding and a new expression of Charlottesville’s spirit of place and the power of public art in the 21st century.

Jury
Beth Meyer, a registered landscape architect, former Dean of the UVA School of Architecture, a member of the US Commission of Fine Arts, and founder of the UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes
Maurice Cox, Planning Director for the City of Detroit, an urban designer, and an architectural educator and has also served as mayor of the City of Charlottesville and NEA Director of Design
Dr. Andrea Douglas, the executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville, former Curator of Contemporary Art at the University of Virginia Art Museum, and a member of the City of Charlottesville’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Race and Monuments

Prize
One Grand Prize Award: US $5,000
Two Finalist Prizes: US $1,000 (x 2)
One Community Choice Award: US $1,000

Entry Fee
None

Organizer
Bushman Dreyfus Architects

Official Website