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| 16 Aug 2024 | |
| AIA Milwaukee News |
Hosted by AIA Milwaukee, the annual Emerging Professionals Design Competition encourages AIA Wisconsin Students, Emerging Professionals, and Architects licensed up to 10 years to submit possible project solutions to real urban design challenges facing the City of Milwaukee.
This year’s competition site was situated on a 2.66-acre site on the bank of the Milwaukee River on the Lower East Side, on the edge of the Historic Brady Street District and between larger scale developments along the river front. This lends itself to the described program intended to serve a growing housing need in the city at large.
Teams were encouraged to develop their own program as part of their entry, with objectives including creating a clearly defined public and private outdoor space, 1:1 parking, a Shared Residential Amenities Building, townhome condominiums, apartments, and to develop an identity and residential branding for the proposed complex. Extra consideration was given to submissions that utilized principles from the AIA Framework for Design Excellence.
Submissions featured a variety of creative and innovative approaches. Five Milwaukee-local jurors blind judged the submissions from AIA Wisconsin members across the state, and three projects were named 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners with a cash prize awarded, courtesy of the competition sponsor, Wangard Partners.
This year’s judges represent a wide range of constituencies, including professional and community representatives. We are deeply grateful for their time and support of this competition and our emerging professional participants.
Stewart Wangard – Executive Chairman, Wangard Partners, Site Owner & Sponsor
Alyssa Remington - Economic Development Specialist, City of Milwaukee Department of City Development
Michael Sander - Executive Director, Brady Street BID #11
Larry Kilmer – Deputy Director, City of Madison Community Development Authority & Professor of Urban Planning, UW-Milwaukee School of Architecture & Urban Planning
Wesley Churchill, AIA – Project Architect, HGA & Young Architect Representative, AIA Wisconsin
And thank you to the AIA Milwaukee Emerging Professionals Design Competition Committee Members responsible for organizing the competition:
Emily Neal, Assoc. AIA
Elena Sellner, Assoc. AIA
Design Team Members: Jake Kennedy, AIA WI Student; Dulce Carreno, AIA WI Student
Garbarnia is designed to be economically constructed with durable materials to create a built environment that won't be a burden to future generations. Units and building forms are simplified and right sized, considering function and form in tandem to minimize material waste and construction costs. Ash wood is extensively utilized for interior finishes, utilizing a locally available resource and creating the opportunity for forest diversification in Wisconsin. Occupancy requirements for individuals making 60% or less of the Average Market Income (AMI) will be exceeded, providing housing for all and making Garbarnia eligible for funding from the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program.
Residents and visitors are encouraged to engage with their natural surroundings through immersion in a series of outdoor spaces small and large. A generous setback from the road provides a welcoming streetscape, and a new riverwalk section allows viewing down and across the river at the confluence to the urban environment and nature. Makerspace compels residents and community members to engage in the work of local artists, the community kitchen offers the opportunity to learn healthy cooking and eating habits, and natural areas around the children's park and strolling area adjacent to Swing Park encourage engagement with the local ecosystem. Garbarnia engages the architectural motifs of the tanneries that formerly filled the shoreline of this stretch of the Milwaukee River. Brick, steel, and stone gabion walls comprise a humble material palette that serves to effectively integrate this new development into the fabric of Milwaukee's history.
Design Team Members: Eric Nofsinger, Assoc. AIA; Grant Bauermeister, AIA; Chandana Rao, Assoc. AIA
Tucked prominently at its west end, Slash caps Brady Street with a vibrant destination for neighborhood events, community association, local commerce, varied recreation, and connected living. Programmatically, the building subverts the traditional model of walled-off private amenities, enthusiastically bringing the surrounding community into what were traditionally exclusionary spaces. Instead of dropping into the site as an interlocuter, Slash situates itself around and within the urban context, acting as a scaffold for new community traditions. The southwest facade glazing sits proudly at the west end of Brady Street as a glowing landmark that the residents of the Brady Street Neighborhood can be proud of.
Design Team Members: Brandon Leeder, AIA; David Lette, Assoc. AIA; Emma Bittner
The formal strategy for both site massing and building typology utilizes the concept of ‘commons’ for organization and circulation. The formal development has been applied to massing and site design - the different housing types are distributed around a central court creating both a distinct separation and common amenity. These common areas are further expressed as decentralized ‘cores’ throughout the buildings. The project assumes Milwaukee’s adoption of Seattle's modified IBC whereas point access block buildings are permitted up to 6-stories with 4-units per floor served by a single core. The point access block model eliminates long, narrow corridors in plan and permits exploration of alternative floor plate design and unit layout. This strategy has allowed the project to explore different typologies among and within the housing types provided - adapting townhouse influences to an apartment concept. Traditional single-loaded and double-loaded corridors reduce the exterior wall exposure of individual units to 1-side, leaving 3-sides bordered by the corridor and adjacent units. Traditional townhomes have the benefit of front and rear exterior access.
This project demonstrates that ‘modules’ of point access blocks can be condensed in a linear series while still planning for the units with exterior access on opposite sides of the unit. Advantages include distributed layout, natural lights, cross ventilation, and access to views and amenities on both sides of the building that are found in traditional townhome design.
All text & imagery above provided by submission materials.
