Current News Releases
May 3, 2007
Design firm Sasaki Associates wins two awards for Innovista master plan
Sasaki Associates Inc., the Boston-based design firm that created the Innovista master plan, has received two prestigious awards for its concept.
The Congress for the New Urbanism has named the Innovista plan a 2007 Charter Award winner in its Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category. Innovista was one of only seven designs honored in its category and one of 20 overall from more than 130 submissions to the international competition.
The Innovista plan incorporates new research facilities for the University of South Carolina and its private partners, but also includes space for residences, retail, restaurants, and recreation. Many of the green areas focus on a waterfront park along the Congaree River and walking and biking paths throughout the area.
“The award characterizes the type of lifestyle we are working to create in Innovista,” says John Parks, the University’s associate vice president for economic development and director of Innovista. “Sasaki has done an excellent job, effectively capturing and expressing the vision of the University, the business community, and state and local government in Columbia.”
Based in Chicago, the CNU is the leading organization promoting walkable, neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl.
“Honorees set the gold standard for urban design and development and serve as powerful examples for future development,” the CNU Web site says. “…The Charter Awards look at how plans and projects respond to and integrate with their contexts and, consequently, how they improve the human experience of the built and natural environments.”
The Boston Society of Landscape Architects also announced that the Innovista plan won its Honor Award for Landscape Analysis and Planning. The Innovista plan was one of only nine winners in its category and one of only two to receive the Honor Award, the highest available in each of the two categories (Planning and Design).
The annual BSLA competition is open to firms located in New England.
“We are especially honored to be recognized by our peers at the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Congress for the New Urbanism for our work at Innovista,” says Richard Galehouse, Sasaki principal, who has led the firm’s planning group for more than 30 years. “In the planning and design fields, awards are given not so much for novelty or flashiness but for expressing the essence of a place. At Innovista we had such rich existing conditions to work with — a dramatic waterfront setting, original Guignard plan dating back two centuries, and an exciting new economic vision for Columbia. The design for Innovista is a synthesis of many layers laid down by previous generations of Columbians.”
