Detroiters and national observers alike have raved about Campus Martius since it opened in November 2004 at the city’s historic crossroads, a once gritty intersection where five major streets converge. The inaugural winner of the Amanda Burden Urban Open Space Award, the project is a 2.5-acre (1-ha) oasis of imaginative horticulture, green granite walls, and crushed limestone paths, returning vibrancy and spurring investment in the formerly downtrodden downtown. The $20 million urban park manages to serve as both a peaceful refuge and a popular destination that attracts more than 2 million visitors a year.
At first glance, the Corvinus University/Studium office building is merely another seven-story office block—albeit a Class A office building with a spectacular vista of the Danube and a multitude of amenities—in downtown Budapest. But the story of how this development came to be is a first in Hungary, a country that shifted in 1989 from a centrally planned economy to a free-market system and one still unaccustomed to public/private partnerships. The Corvinus University/Studium building is a win-win-win achievement for a public university (Corvinus), a private developer (Wing), and the city of Budapest.
The expansion of the Scots Church in Sydney, Australia, is a project that redefines urban development conceptions of historic preservation and adaptive use. This redevelopment involved the conversion of a historic church and its air rights into a 146-unit, environmentally sensitive apartment building with commercial and office uses at its lower levels. Rechristened the “Portico” Scots Church, the resulting architectural feat integrates a neo-Gothic relic with contemporary metal-and-glass residential towers.
Located in the newly established district of Nanhai, the 286-acre (116 ha) Thousand Lantern Lake Park System provides a continuous urban corridor for the surrounding neighborhood. It consists of a commercial precinct, hotels, public parks, civic buildings, streetscapes, and a museum arranged around a series of lakes and waterways. The latter act as the connecting elements within the larger site and provide transportation networks that run through the entire park. The entire green, mixed-use corridor brings energy and liveliness to the city.
One of the first parks built as part of the District of Columbia’s Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, Canal Park presents a model of sustainability, attaining both Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certifications. The public-private partnership that was established in order to design, fund, and develop the project allowed for neighborhood-scale impact. The park has quickly established itself as a social gathering place and an economic trigger for the surrounding neighborhood.
