Deck the Mall with Follies
The St. Louis Follies Ideas Competition began soliciting entries at the end of July, and the contest closed November 30. The judges include Adam Whiton (from MIT's media arts & sciences program), Jasmin Aber (an R.A. architect and a research scholar at the University of California Berkeley), Rollin Stanley (executive director at the City of St. Louis Planning & Urban Design Agency; see Randall Roberts' RFT feature on him here), Richard Baron (of developer McCormack Baron Salazar), Carl Ray Miller (from the Art Institute of Chicago) and several Washington University staffers.
A folly is "an often extravagant picturesque building erected to suit a fanciful taste." Trust us, we looked it up.
But follies are best defined by example: The supercool Millennium Park in Chicago is chock-full of follies. Per the St. Louis contest's Web site, the entries solicited for the Gateway Mall are to be interactive structures that will serve as surfaces for multimedia projections. These works will be cutting-edge but will act in conjunction with, not in opposition to, the current surroundings (i.e. the Arch).
On December 9 and 10, the judges examined the proposals from local and national groups and selected the winners, whose designs will appear at various sites, roughly from the Kiel to the riverfront. The first-place idea was submitted by a St. Louis team: Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis, Hillary Petrie and Tyler Survant. And the runner-up submission came from Demitrious Gourdoukis and Karina Tryfonidou of Clayton.
To learn about the winning folly designs, including those that tied for third place and the honorable mention, visit the Lammert Building at 911 Washington Avenue; an awards ceremony will be held there at 11 a.m. tomorrow, December 16.
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