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.