Engineering an Empire: Chicago

Chicago's UrbanLab Wins "The City of the Future: A Design and Engineering Challenge" FEBRUARY 12, 2007 -- ChicagoÂ's UrbanLab is the national winner of The History Channel competition that challenged the nationÂ's architects to design their city 100 years from now based on lessons found in the series Engineering an Empire. The winning entry envisioned Chicago as an environmentally holistic urban center replenishing Lake Michigan, the largest concentration of fresh water in the nation. In addition to the $10,000 they received for competing against fellow Chicago architects in November for the right to be a national challenger, the firm is now being presented with an additional $10,000 from The History Channel. National competition juror Daniel Libeskind, winner of the world-renowned competition to design the master plan for Ground Zero in Manhattan, announced the winner following an online challenge that allowed the winners of charrettes held in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to present their vision before a world wide Internet audience. Web visitors then voted for the architectural team they felt offered the most insightful, visionary urban world of tomorrow. Second place went to New York-based Architecture Research Office, which acknowledged that in the year 2106, global warming would put most of ManhattanÂ's streets underwater. In this projection of our future, New York remained a thriving metropolis as canals became corridors of commerce. In Los Angeles, Eric Owen Moss Architects sought to make use of outmoded freeways as a new environment for smart growth and non-polluting industries. As the next phase of this nationwide competition, engineering students in each city will be challenged to take their winning Â"City of the FutureÂ" and bring it to life through innovative engineering concepts and applications. Student team submissions will be reviewed and judged by a panel of engineering experts including representatives from IBM.>