More than 1,200 people from 10 nations on four continents have signed up thus far for the Chicago Tribune’s international architectural competition for public housing.
The competition, which invites contestants to redesign the Cabrini Green public housing development for its low-income residents, is being held 71 years after the Tribune’s famed, world-wide design contest for Tribune Tower.
Architects who have designed some of Chicago’s major public buildings are among those who have mailed letters to the Tribune to register for the competition. But entries aren’t coming solely from the blueprint crowd.
Children who live at Cabrini-Green, public health nurses whose daily work brings them into the 78-building complex, and even an inmate at an Indiana state prison have responded to the Tribune’s call to improve the design of low-income public housing.
The contest, open to architects and lay people alike, is an “ideas competition.” In this type of contest, the winning design generally is not built, as often happens in a traditional architectural contest. However, Chicago Housing Authority chairman Vincent Lane, who is planning to redevelop Cabrini-Green, has indicated that he may use ideas from the contest for the proposed redevelopment.
Lane is on the 7-member jury that will decide the winner of the competition. The jury is chaired by Chicago architect Cynthia Weese, vice president of the American Institute of Architects.
The registration deadline for the competition is April 1. Entries are due June 1. The winners will be formally announced June 10, which is the 146th anniversary of the Tribune’s first date of publishing.
The contest is dedicated to the memory of Dantrell Davis, a 7-year-old Cabrini Green resident who was shot to death by a sniper last Oct. 13 as he walked to school in the complex.
