AIA New Hampshire Emerging Professionals Win

On January 22, 2017 two members of the RODE team, Katie Cressall and Ben Wan, were honored with first prize for their entry in the AIANH Emerging Professionals Design Competition (formerly the AIANH Intern/Young Architect Design Competition) at its33rd AIANH Awards Banquet at the Manchester Country Club in Bedford, NH. The competition provides a platform for interns and young architectural professionals to demonstrate their design skills as a means to "gain recognition and assist a community with their design challenges.”

This year’s competition challenged entrants to develop a design revolved around a hot-button topic of revitalizing the recently closed Rockingham Park in Salem, NH, into a small scale “inner city” or “lifestyle center”, which have started gaining popularity around the country outside of major cities.

In selecting Katie and Ben as the winning team, the jurors shared feedback on the success of their design saying, “overall, the jury found this submission to be quite strong. While the competition was open to interpretation on what community building, or buildings, the submitters wanted to incorporate, this team went above and beyond. Their project, dubbed the “Civic Mile”, introduces a number of community spaces, such as a library, performing arts building, child and elder care, and an art studio, among others. The number of building forms introduced were treated as one cohesive idea, and the way in which the team both integrated them into the site, and connected them to the surrounding area was elegantly done, and would be a great addition to any growing city."

For more information about Katie and Ben's winning project head to the AIA New Hampshire site.