Jury and Awards

Awards

The awards:
1st place: $6,000
1st runner up: $4,000
2nd runner up: $2,000

Jury

Jan Gehl, Architect, Gehl Architects
Jan Gehl is an architect whose career has focused on improving public spaces for the benefit of people and community. He is a founding partner of Gehl Architects – Urban Quality Consultants, a Copenhagen-based firm that has consulted with local governments internationally to improve and create vibrant urban spaces. At the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Gehl is a Professor Emeritus of Urban Design at the School of Architecture. In 2007, the New York City Department of Transportation retained Gehl’s services to study specific locations and recommend improvements to the pedestrian and bicyclist environment.

Alex Washburn, Chief Urban Designer, New York City Department of City Planning
Alexandros E. Washburn, AIA, is the Chief Urban Designer of the City of New York, Department of City Planning. His approach to urban design combines both architecture and landscape architecture in a fusion of ecology and urbanism. Alex founded the Moynihan Station Redevelopment Corporation after joining the staff of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and has taught at Princeton and was the senior visiting critic at Columbia University’s Urban Design Program. Alex holds an undergraduate degree in biology from UNC Chapel Hill and a Masters of Architecture from Harvard University. He lives with his family in Red Hook, Brooklyn and is currently writing a book, The Nature of Urban Design.

Michelle de la Uz, Executive Director, Fifth Avenue Committee
Michelle became the Fifth Avenue Committee’s (FAC) Executive Director in January 2004, after serving on FAC’s Board of Directors from 2000-2003, most recently as Co-Chair. She has 20 years of experience in public and community service and holds Master’s degrees in Public Administration and Social Work from Columbia University. Prior to joining FAC, Michelle was program director for the uptown sites of the Center for Urban Community Services in Washington Heights and Harlem, where she oversaw services in supportive housing for 400 low-income tenants. Previously she was Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s first director of constituent services and directed her South Brooklyn District Office and was active in advancing transportation, environmental justice, immigration reform and employment policy initiatives. She is the first in her working-class immigrant family to graduate from college and is a product of bi-lingual education. Michelle is a long-time Park Slope resident and the recipient, as part of a FAC team, of the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World award. She currently is a member of the following city-wide affordable housing and brownfield redevelopment organization’s Board of Directors; Association for Neighborhood Housing Development, Inc., New Partners for Community Revitalization, Inc. and of Community Partnership Development Corporation, Inc.

Sam Schwartz, Transportation Planner, Sam Schwartz Engineering, Inc.
Sam Schwartz is President and CEO of Sam Schwartz Engineering, a multi-disciplinary consulting firm specializing in traffic and transportation engineering. Sam is an expert in the field of transportation engineering and traffic safety. He specializes in developing urban traffic programs utilizing his expert knowledge in traffic demand management, transit systems management, traffic calming, transportation planning and engineering. He coined the term "gridlock" and is widely respected for his congestion relief strategies.

Sam is on the faculty of Cooper Union, where he established The Infrastructure Institute. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University and a member of the New York Transportation Journal Editorial Board. Prior to founding the firm in 1995, Sam worked in the private sector and then served as Chief Engineer/ First Deputy Commissioner for the New York City Department of Transportation from 1986 to 1990. He also served as New York City's Traffic Commissioner from 1982 to 1986 and from 1971 to 1982, held several key positions within NYC DOT. He holds a BS in Physics from Brooklyn College and a Masters in Civil Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Andy Wiley-Schwartz, Assistant Commissioner, NYC Department of Transportation
Andy currently serves as Assistant Commissioner at the NYC Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Office of Planning and Sustainability. Prior to working for the DOT, Andy was the Vice President of the Transportation program at Project for Public Spaces (PPS), a non-profit that works with community to create better public spaces, where he supervised and coordinated DOT training programs, corridor management projects, main street and downtown street enhancement, traffic calming, and bicycle/pedestrian projects. Prior to PPS, Andy was a political analyst in Washington, DC, where he wrote and commented on political affairs and the impact of trade, monetary and domestic policy on the financial markets. Andy has a Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College.

David Burney, Commissioner, Department of Design and Construction
David J. Burney, AIA is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Design and Construction (“DDC”), the agency that manages capital projects for a variety of City agencies including the Departments of Transportation and Environmental Protection; and for the many cultural institutions such as libraries and museums that receive City capital funds. At Mayor Bloomberg’s direction, David launched a City-wide “Design and Construction Excellence Initiative” with the goal of raising the quality of design and construction of public works throughout New York City. Prior to joining DDC, David was Director of Design and Capital Improvement at the New York City Housing Authority. From 1982 to 1990 David practiced architecture with the New York Firm of Davis Brody & Associates where he was involved in a variety of projects including the Zeckendorf Towers on Union Square and the Rose Building at Lincoln Center.

David holds degrees from the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and at the University of London. He was the recipient of the AIA NYC Chapter Public Architect Award in 1996 and received a Sloane Public Service Award in 2003.

Karen Lee, MD, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Dr. Karen Lee is currently Deputy Director of the Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Dr. Lee received her medical degree from the University of Alberta in Canada, followed by a Masters of Health Science in Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Toronto. After completing a residency in Community Medicine, she worked in local public health in Canada, addressing issues related to infectious disease control, tobacco control and the prevention of chronic diseases. While in Canada, she was a Steering Committee member of the Alberta Healthy Living Network, a World Health Organization CINDI initiative to address non-communicable diseases through tobacco control, healthy eating and active living. Before coming to NYC, she was with the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where she worked in the Physical Activity and Health Branch at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Laurie Hawkinson, Architect, Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architect
Laurie Hawkinson is a principal at Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects, an Award-winning practice based in New York City. An Associate Professor of Architecture with tenure at Columbia University, Hawkinson has served as adjunct professor at SCI-Arc, Harvard University, Yale University, Parsons School of Design, and the University of Miami. She is a board member of the Architectural League of New York, a past member of the Board of Governors of the New York Foundation of the Arts, and has served as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts in Architecture, Planning and Design from 1986-1989. Collaborative projects include the North Carolina Museum of Art “Master” Site Plan and project, now built, for an outdoor cinema and amphitheater with artist Barbara Kruger and landscape architect Nicholas Quennell, LA Arts Park Competition and the Seattle Waterfront Project, also with Kruger and Quennell. She currently serves as a member of the design Review Board for the Ohio State University and as a “peer reviewer” for the General Service Administration of the NEA.

Laurie Hawkinson received her Masters in Fine Arts from the University of California at Berkeley, then attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York. She received her Professional Degree in Architecture from the Cooper Union in 1983.

Brad Downey, Artist
Brad Downey is a Berlin-based artist that creates public art in film, sculpture, painting, and drawing. With Leon Reid, aka Darius Jones, he developed a new style of transmuting traditional traffic signs into other humanized symbols. Downey regularly lectures about unsanctioned public art. His work has been featured in the New York Times and been exhibited at the Basel Art Fair in Miami, the ICA in London and Mass MOCA in the US. Brad holds a degree in film from Pratt Institute. His longtime collaboration with Leon Reid is chronicled in the recently released Adventures Of Darius And Downey (Thames&Hudson, 2008).

Leon Reid IV, Artist
Leon Reid (aka Darius Jones) is a New York-based artist that has developed a reputation for public installations that resonate with witty messages about isolation, race, irony, humor, and tension. From the Jen Bekman gallery “As Darius, Reid began to stretch his imagination in ways that he could make artwork engrained into the social fabric, challenging everyday people's interpretation of their surroundings.” Leon received an art degree from Pratt Institute. His longtime collaboration with Brad Downey is chronicled in the recently released Adventures Of Darius And Downey (Thames&Hudson, 2008).

Joan Byron, Director, Sustainability & Environmental Justice Initiative, Pratt Center for Community Development
Since 2003, Joan Byron has directed the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative (SAEJ) at the Pratt Institute Center for Community & Environmental Development, which provides technical assistance in mapping, planning, architecture, design, and community development to New York City environmental justice groups. SAEJ projects include significant work in the South Bronx, assisting community-based organizations working to restore the Bronx River, campaigning to remove the Sheridan Expressway, and community planning for greenways. Additionally, SAEJ projects include the Transportation Equity Project, which examines ways that New York's transportation systems can improve quality of life and create opportunities for all residents.

From 1989 through 2003, Joan Byron served as Director of the Pratt Center’s non-profit architecture practice in the design and construction of more than 2,000 affordable housing units, in addition to community health, child care and cultural facilities. Joan Byron is a registered architect, and has taught in Pratt Institute's undergraduate architecture program and in its Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment.