MILWAUKEE | Lakefront Gateway Plaza

[Boisebro]

More exciting news for Milwaukee: a redesign of the lakefront.

from JSonline:

Nothing says Milwaukee like the lakefront, the place where the urban fabric meets a curve of freshwater, and several internationally recognized architects and designers will compete to transform it.

Called the Lakefront Gateway Plaza, the urban design project promises to refashion and make more coherent a stretch of lakefront in and around existing cultural structures, such as Summerfest, Discovery World, the Milwaukee Art Museum and War Memorial, as well as highly anticipated developments such as the massive Northwestern Mutual headquarters, the planned Couture apartment tower, the streetcar project and roadway changes.

Four design teams were selected by a group of stakeholders put together by the City of Milwaukee to compete and come up with a plan to redefine the public spaces. Each team has a lead designer and a team of firms and individuals with varying kinds of design, planning and engineering expertises.

The leads are James Corner Field Operations, the Office of James Burnett, AECOM and Graef.

"This is the front door to Milwaukee and for the longest time it's been a confusing cluster of unresolved components…these iconic pieces that come together in these terrible ways," said Brian Johnsen of Johnsen Schmaling Architects, a Milwaukee firm that's on one of the shortlisted teams.

"It has the potential to realize the full potential of a lake city," said James Dallman, of La Dallman, also on one of the shortlisted teams. Dallman called the connections between the city and lake "frayed."

full store here.