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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > April > 10 > Entry
Winners Selected for ‘Temporary Outdoor Gallery Space’ ideas competition
One of the spiffiest creative competitions to pop up on Austin’s calendar this year — the Temporary Outdoor Gallery Space (TOGS) Ideas Competition — wrapped up Wednesday night with the announcement of the winners.
The competition — co-sponsored by Art Alliance Austin and AIA Austin — set out to solicit designs for a structure that could be used in lieu of those white fabric tents normally offered to artists who participate in the Alliance’s annual art fair, this year re-dubbed Art City Austin.
Last year, a spring storm packing strong winds whipped through downtown the night before the annual festival was set to begin, destroying or blowing away artists’ tents. This year, the bright minds behind Art Alliance Austin decided to get pro-active — and at the same time, sponsor an creative competition. Isn’t that what any arts support group should do? Foster creativity?
We think so.
Wednesday’s unveiling of the winners was a buoyant affair at Loft, the trendy home furnishing store on W. Cesar Chavez St.
The Grand Prize ($1,000) was awarded to Amy Wynne and Mark Leveno from Los Angeles, California. Their proposal imagines a flexible wall system with movable pannels that surrounds a basic shipping container-like structure. Check here for a gallery of the winners.
The Second Prize ($500) went to Toshihiro Kimura and Masaki Kanno of Yoyogo, Tokyo, Japan. The Third Prize ($250) was given to the design of Peter Lingamfelter and Taylor Medlin of Berkeley, California.
Twelve honorable mentions were also awarded to finalists from Chicago, IL; Brooklyn, NY; Melbourne, VIC, Australia; Highland Village, TX; New Haven, CT; Arlington, TX; Oschatz, Germany; New Providence, NJ; League City, TX; Nantes, France; Dallas, TX; and the team of Jay Colombo and Micah Land from Austin.
Judging was blind: The jurors did not know the names or cities/countries of origin of the applicants.
Some 269 submissions came in from 23 countries. That list was culled down earlier this week by a panel of jurors: Louise Harpman (Specht Harpman Architects and associate dean at the UT’s School of Architecture; Dana Friis-Hansen, executive director of the Austin Museum of Art’ Elizabeth Dunbar, curator of Arthouse, Goil Amornvivat, architectural designer and currently a designer on TLC’s Trading Spaces; and, Wally Workman of Wally Workman Gallery.
Goil, by the way, was impressed at the reach of the competition and the energy it percolated. “At the end of day, (this competition) was about marrying practicality with spectacle,” he said. “I really impressed with the kind of thinking a competition like this can foster and tha there’s this kind of energy in Austin.”
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