Polite, black-suited security guards at the door of the Center for Architecture at 536 LaGuardia Place near Bleeker Street on a recent warm night. And past the guards, a diverse crowd of hundreds of hip, young designers and architects on three levels of open space and high ceilings, colorful design plans and drawings of varying projects from different parts of the world on the walls and tables in the room+s. An international buzz to the event as, downstairs, the crowd assembled for a panel discussion and awards ceremony featuring the winners of an "ideas competition" presenting theoretical projects for developing Southpoint on Roosevelt Island – young architects from France, Switzerland, and the United States.

"Southpoint: From Ruin to Rejuvenation (The Roosevelt Island Universal Arts Center)" is the longish title for the competition organized by Emerging New York Architects (ENYA), a group of young architects within the American Institute of Architects (AIA), New York Chapter. The concept, open to those in the field less than a decade after graduation, was to create hypothetical designs for the development of Southpoint, plans that would include the James Renwick Smallpox Hospital ruin and, according to the competition’s accompanying exhibition publication, "a multi-use facility that would accommodate both performing and visual arts. Designed with the entire Roosevelt Island constituency in mind, the competition was tailored to fit two Island organizations" – namely, the Roosevelt Island Visual Arts Association (RIVAA), and the Coler-Goldwater nursing facility, serving as "clients" for the architects. There were over 300 entries; 63 were chosen for the exhibition; they are on view at the Center for Architecture until June 17. The award winners received prize money totaling $11,500.

The publication notes that the success of an ideas competition "comes from the critical mass of entries and their ability to inspire a community through the sheer number of innovative alternatives." Hopefully, the community was inspired last September, when RIVAA and Coler-Goldwater sought to raise awareness of the forthcoming competition by hosting an Island exhibition of ENYA’s 2004 competition – theoretical designs for an East River boathouse – as well as artwork from RIVAA and Coler-Goldwater artists. A number of architects attended the opening reception, including the subsequent Southpoint competition first prize winner, Nina Baniahmad, an Austrian, who flew in from Paris for the event and stayed to tour Southpoint, meeting with residents to study the community and its requirements for the site.

As Baniahmad, other award winners, competition organizers, and judges took their places on tall, red-lacquered designer stools at the front of the room to begin the evening’s discussion, Theodore Liebman – chief of architecture thirty years ago at the Urban Development Corporation, which built Roosevelt Island, hiring Philip Johnson for the master plan and other architects for the buildings – stood tall in the throng and feigned strong bemusement at the winning projects.

"I was there at the beginning," said the white-crowned, mustached architect and planner, now principal of his own firm, The Liebman-Melting Partnership. Of Roosevelt Island’s descent into market-rate apartments and condominiums, and the loss of the original plan’s goal of mixed-income housing, Liebman said with a smile, "I can tell you, we had a wonderful idea in the ’70s, and everyone since then has been messing it up – by introducing more and more high-income housing. They keep changing the mix in that direction. And that’s what upsets me the most." As for the surrounding displays of theoretical plans for Southpoint, he added good-naturedly, "I’m a little ‘disappointed’ by this evening, because it has omitted the Louis Kahn memorial of Franklin Roosevelt. And who could have done better than he? And I selected Kahn in 1974 to create the memorial."

The crowd was called to order, and the panel discussion began with comments from the award winners.

Historic Preservation Award winner and New Yorker Eric Brodfuehrer’s concept embraced the hospital ruins, with a platform leading directly from the building to the west shore. "The drive behind my project was to stabilize the building for a new entity to come in. For it to grow, it needs to be connected" to the City across the river. His plan calls for ferry service to Manhattan.

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Historic Preservation Award

New Yorkers Dominic Leong and Brian Price won third Prize. Their design builds out from the shoreline with art and gallery barges, and rooftop leisure-scapes and sculpture parks." Said Leong, "Our project addresses the problem in terms of cultural accessibility." The site is isolated, yet close to Manhattan. "So we had to ask how they could be connected. So there was an overlap between bridging City, art, and nature." A series of curving bridges links Southpoint to Manhattan and Queens. "We wanted to provide architecture with an operational aspect to it, rather than being picture-postcard iconic."

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Third Prize

From Basel and Zurich, Switzerland, second-prize winners Oliver Brandenberger, Stephan Buehrer, Jose Bento, Celine Guibat – calling themselves a "Swiss-French/Swiss-German Swiss Mix design team – created "a new sky…made out of a vertical grid composed of metallic poles, regular and precise, shiny at night, rigorous and scarfed in daytime," as it states in the publication. Translation: converting Southpoint into a glowing ‘lantern’ of crossing light poles, said Guibat, which is "open to the spirit of New York and centered on the ruins of the past."

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	Second prize: A massive array of light poles, “shiny at night, scarfed in daytime.”

The top award, known as the ENYA Prize, went to Nina Baniahmad. Her design begins at the Queensboro Bridge and travels along the eastern side of Southpoint, using a series of ramps that diverge into porches or rooms as the structure moves along. "The point is to provide an esplanade, a pathway to Southpoint, starting from the bridge, where an elevator brings people to ground level, taking them along the eastern side — instead of the western side, where a lot of patients are on that path," she said. There are parklands in and around the ruins. The competition brief called for artists’ housing, "but I adjusted that to include housing for ex-patients, too, with an enclosed garden." She added, "It could be a new social and cultural landmark for New York. My project is more of a pathway to Southpoint, and the site is perfect because it is adjacent to the southern hospital with many patients, many of them in wheelchairs. And Roosevelt Island is an ideal place for it, because it is losing more and more of its identity with social justice. That’s why I call my project, ‘The Social-Cultural Esplanade of Roosevelt Island.’"

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Nina Baniahmad’s top-award design would install a series of ramps at Southpoint.

Two of the seven-member jury attended the panel discussion: Beth Tauke, associate professor of architecture at SUNY Buffalo, and Tad Sudol, architect and RIVAA president. Asked her opinion of Baniahmad’s modern, flowing esplanade design, Tauke said: "I think the winner is conservative, from the Universal design point of view, meaning you design with everyone in mind, regardless of age, mobility, etc. But in her case, she used the convention of the ramp – the ultimate component of Universal design – in a new and exciting way."

Sudol recalled that when ENYA approached RIVAA on using Southpoint as the site for the competition, "we started to talk about different ideas, and we asked artists in both hospitals, north and south, to contribute work – and we saw great talent there. And we included that work in our RIVAA exhibition last September. So the middle of the Island met the ends of the Island" because of this Southpoint competition. Of the jury selection process, held at the Center for Architecture in late January, he said, "All 300-plus entries were here, and some of the design boards were on the floor. Each of us had to pick ten – so I missed some. I missed the second-prize entry, for example! But the first prize was the most sophisticated drawing there."

The panel discussion ended, and the winners were given their award certificates. Afterward, standing off the main room in a hallway filled with a thick, jostling, crowd of young architects, and lined with drawings and planning boards of theoretical Southpoint developments, Tauke noted the unique emphasis on social justice in the competition – by both the organizers and entrants – addressing quality-of-life issues for marginalized populations. Above the din of downtown conversations, she said: "I don’t mean just disabilities, but various economic and racial groups, age, gender equity – allowing people with all those factors to live together in this community. The other jurors came with their own ideas of social justice, but it was on everyone’s mind. And I have to say I have never been on a juried competition where it was such a key component of the evaluation process for the jury. If the design did not incorporate some concept of social justice, it did not make the grade. There had to be that aspect to it."