Undertaking Open Space Design

There are two methods that the Open Space Revitalization Office can use to undertake the detailed design of open space projects on the campus: design competitions and a competitive consultant selection process.

Competitions

Competitions are becoming more commonplace for important public open spaces in North America, and have long been the established procedure for all kinds of open space design projects in Europe. There are many kinds of competitions, the two most straightforward being an Ideas Competition and a Design Competition.

An Ideas Competition is used to look at a range of solutions to a problem. It is generally not the intention of an ideas competition to implement the winning results as a next phase. The competition is juried, a range of awards is determined and the results of the process are publicly displayed for comment. An ideas competition was successfully undertaken by the University several years ago for St. George Street. By their nature, ideas competitions lend themselves to very broad based participation.

A Design Competition is a more focused exercise to obtain a solution to be implemented by the winning team. Participation can be open or selected from a short list of submitted expressions of interest. The competition is juried, awards are given to finalists and a design commission is given to the winning entry for implementation. The Oakpark Central Park in Oakville and Dundas Square and Court House Square in Toronto are recent examples of successful public open space design competitions.

Design Competitions and Ideas Competitions are a positive way for the University to undertake selected open space design projects. Competitions offer several advantages for a design process:

1. They are intensely creative processes, often resulting in designs not obtainable through incremental review by an administrative decision-making process.

2. The submissions often include a unique collaboration of design skills not readily available in individual design firms.

3. Properly managed competitions for significant spaces attract a wide range of design groups from around the world. The designs resulting from the competition usually enjoy a significant profile and exposure.

4. Competitions allow the design industry to grow by providing an opportunity for young design talent to compete on the basis of design skill and presentation.

Competitions could be held for entire open spaces or for individual elements within the spaces such as memorials, site furnishings and smaller special places.

A properly run design competition requires substantial up-front organization and resources to create a program for the space, develop a proper briefing package and to coordinate, judge and promote the results of the process.

It is possible that the competition will not produce a design suitable to the University. This result has a direct relationship to the effort and definition placed in the organization of the event.

Competitive Interviews

Competitive interviews are used to select a design service rather than a specific design or idea, and represent the most common way for the OSRO to obtain professional design services. This type of selection process is ideal when the University has a clear understanding of what it is trying to accomplish and is able to judge the ability of a group of professionals to successfully implement the project.

In order to obtain the highest possible level of creativity in this process, several guidelines should be used:

1. The process should include a general, open and widely advertised call for expressions of interest in the project.

2. Expressions of interest should be encouraged from multi-dimensional teams of landscape architects, architects and artists combined with specialty expertise such as environmental engineers, traffic calming specialists, horticulturists, lighting and way-finding specialists.

3. Short-listed firms should be invited to make presentations open to the general University community.