CORRECTING and REPLACING Portal Bridge Design Symposium Announced

Design Teams Share Bold Design Concepts for Point State Park

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Second graph, first sentence should read: These five design proposals will be presented at a symposium to be held at the Carnegie Museum of Art Lecture Hall in Oakland on February 25, 2012 from 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. (sted February 23, 2012).

“Portal to the Point: A Design Ideas Exploration”

The corrected release reads:

PORTAL BRIDGE DESIGN SYMPOSIUM ANNOUNCED

Design Teams Share Bold Design Concepts for Point State Park

Five nationally-recognized design teams will be in Pittsburgh on Saturday, February 25, to publicly present their design concepts for the Portal Bridge, the iconic entranceway to Pittsburgh’s Point State Park.

These five design proposals will be presented at a symposium to be held at the Carnegie Museum of Art Lecture Hall in Oakland on February 25, 2012 from 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. This event is free and open to the general public. Each design team will provide a brief presentation, followed by a roundtable discussion with all of the participants.

Following the formal symposium in the morning, the public is invited to join students and professionals for an interactive workshop with members of the design teams in the afternoon, to be held in the Hall of Sculpture. All of the designs, which will be on display at the symposium, are available for viewing online at www.portaltothepoint.org.

“Portal to the Point: A Design Ideas Exploration” is an idea generation project focused on the portal bridge as an opportunity to add a bold new dimension to Pittsburgh’s signature urban park. In 2011, Colcom Foundation initiated the project by engaging the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, with coordination by SPRINGBOARD Design, to issue a call for design qualifications related to the portal bridge. The Foundation cited an interest in establishing a greater appreciation for one of Pittsburgh’s most interesting yet unheralded places.

SPRINGBOARD Design invited multidisciplinary teams from across the United States to explore ideas relating to the form, function, artistic elements, and interpretative design of the portal bridge and its immediate vicinity. Qualifications from fifteen design teams were submitted and five were selected by a review committee of architects, landscape architects, designers, artists, educators, and CEOs, as well as key stakeholders.

Five design teams from across the United States were selected to explore ideas relating to the form, function, artistic elements, and interpretative design of Point State Park’s Portal Bridge.

The five design teams are:

• Marlon Blackwell Architect, Fayetteville, AR
  www.marlonblackwell.com
• MAYA Design, Pittsburgh, PA
  www.maya.com
• SCAPE / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, New York, NY
  www.scapestudio.com
• Weiss/Manfredi, New York, NY
  www.weissmanfredi.com
• wHY Architecture, Culver City, CA
  www.why-architecture.com