Award of Excellence Winner (3rd)

Flipping the Strip , 2008
Aptum Architecture
Zurich and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois

Site: Tempe: 524 W. Broadway Road (near Roosevelt Street)
Design team: Julie M. Larsen, Roger Hubeli, Beat Steuri (www.aptumarchitecture.com)
Estimated construction cost: $1.67 million
Features: prominent streetscape, mixed-use and housing, outdoor plaza

In shifting the bulk of activity to the perimeter of this strip-mall site, Aptum Architecture plays a new riff on two important standard urban types: the old town square and Main Street, USA. Aptum wraps the site with a modular facade (like a big folding screen) to give this city block the strong, condensed impact of Main Street, here updated with super-signage along the streetscape. This architectural wrapper simultaneously creates a central community plaza nestled therein. Aptum's treatment of the perimeter shelters the interior spaces of the site and establishes a dramatic, enticing gateway into its core.

The landscaped green "oasis"--of which the passing traffic can sneak a peak--becomes a tranquil public gathering spot where there was once a sea of parking. The architects think of this oasis as a 21^st-century variation on the "Emerald Necklace," conceived by the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead (1822 - 1903) as a string of parks and public spaces that would meander throughout greater Boston. Flipping the Strip might be repeated up and down a thoroughfare to create a chain of mini parks and pleasant pockets in which to congregate.

Aptum notes: "The strip, in its nature, is a place without identity that creates monotony by the mere fact that it only houses one type of program--commercial space." As an anecdote to this sameness, the firm also introduces three other levels of "program," or functions to be accommodated by the design: 9 to 5 usage (for example, retail, grocery, coffee shop), with parking added on the roof; the 24/7 activity of entertainment, recreation and housing (such as a drive-in theater, elderly housing, sports facilities); and "tuck-away" backspaces for utilitarian needs such as trash and recycling. Housed in the expandable wrapper, these spaces could be repurposed, shrunk or grown as the community needs change over time.