If you were asked to transform a notoriously neglected city block in one of America’s most recognizable cities into a model example of sustainability what would you create?  Hundreds of designers, architects, students and engineers entered the Re:Vision Dallas competition to answer this question.  The entries were diverse, imaginitive and showed an incredible passion for the future of Dallas and the world.    Mayor Tom Leppert, Central Dallas Community Development Corporation, and Dallas community organizations have to come together to select a winning design and the top 3 entries are on display here.  Media kits are available for download below each design.

Eric Corey Freed was in the unique position as a juror for the competition.  Imagine the difficulty of narrowing down over a 150 incredibly intriguing and forward thinking entries into 3 winners.  Listen to the podcast or read the transcript below to hear Mr. Freed’s thoughts on the entries and what were some of his favorites.

To learn more about Urban Revision check out the websites www.urbanrevision.com and www.revision-dallas.com.  You can also follow us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/urbanrevision

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May 20, 2009

…Talking with Eric Corey Freed, organic architect, who is also a member of Urban Re:Vision.
So I just spent an hour talking to a room-full of people about urban revision and our entire story of how we started with a series of five competitions that looked at different aspects of sustainability, energy, water. And then our big competition which just closed in May, and we just had the judging yesterday, and we announce the winners next week of a city block in Dallas for a real block, for a real place in a real city that will really get built, and we pick three winners and three honorable mentions, and people can go online at urbanrevision.com and see them next week.

So if you can tell me, not the winners, but name an entry that you found particularly interesting.
There was an entry that I found very interesting that was a building that absorbed carbon and filtered the air, and they had a lot of science and documentation reams of paper showing how this could work, and it was a very intriguing idea of a building that’s truly regenerative not just in terms of providing energy but fixing some of the problems such as carbon emissions. There was one, actually showed it today that took aircraft fuselage, the tubes of the airplane, and cut off the ends and stacked them into a rack and became apartments, kind of a modular housing thing.

Very cool.
So there was a lot of great ideas. I mean the range and depth of the entries was phenomenal. In fact that’s what made it such a long two days because we had to narrow down 100 incredible entries down to three.

So you were impressed with the entries then?
Oh very impressed! It was far above what I ever could have imagined coming in. And they clearly spent hundreds of hours putting these things together.

So was it mostly professionals then who were entering the contest, or did regular citizens and students get involved too?
We had everybody. The entries were anonymous and then at the end we were able to look to see who did what, and there was a range of everything from students to big large gigantic corporate firms to everybody in between.  That was the real intent of the competition was to get that broad range of entries. And you wouldn’t know it by the entries… I mean they were just so overwhelming, but people can go online and look and see what was entered.

Cool thanks for talking with us!
Thank you.

Urban Re:Vision will be speaking at Green Cities Florida to share the story of how a crumbling parking lot in downtown Dallas is being transformed into the nations first fully sustainable inner-city square block.

Potential requirements, barriers, and changes will be examined in an effort to pave the way for other cities to adopt the Dallas approach. This examination will also serve to aid both site-specific, and regional decision-making.

The following is an excerpt from WorldChanging.Org:

On December 5, our allies at Urban Re:Vision joined forces with the City of Dallas, Texas to host a planning session for an incredibly ambitious green building project. The day-long charrette brought together city officials, urban planners, master architects and green building experts in anticipation of a truly visionary project: the creation of a sustainable city block in downtown Dallas.

The charrette helped prepare guidelines for an international design competition called Building Blocks Dallas, which will kick off in January. The process began in August, when experts convened in San Francisco to determine the unified conceptual framework, a document that would guide the creation of a sustainable city block project in any community. The session in Dallas focused exclusively on translating that universal framework to Dallas itself, with the goal of creating a set of detailed data so complete that any contestant around the world would be able to create a vision for a sustainable block relevant to Dallas, regardless of whether he or she had ever set foot in Texas.

The winning city block design will actually be built, on what is currently an unused parking lot spanning two blocks across the street from Dallas City Hall. According to Urban Re:Vision, one of the two blocks will be transformed into public green space; the other will be devoted to the new sustainable city block.

The lead developer for the project will be the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation (CDC), a local community development organization. The CDC will be responsible for bringing in the developers and contractors that will turn the design vision into a living, functioning location. The non-profit developer is an arm of the Central Dallas Ministries, a faith-based community development organization whose mission is to build affordable housing, develop communities, and establish economic opportunities for the people of Dallas County.

But the big-picture goal of the contest isn’t limited to sustainable development in Dallas alone, says Ian Bryan, media relations director at Urban Re:Vision. “The reason we’re doing it is to create a model [for sustainable development] that’s so well thought out that any city could replicate it in their own community.”

Florida conference topics covered will include: energy systems, transportation, the natural and developed environment, community, the economy and technology.

Learn more about the Dallas project at www.revision-dallas.com.