The Pantheon Institute: Spring 2011 Thorp Prize winners announced!

The Spring 2011 Thorp Prize gave outstanding results. The Penn State Architecture and Landscape Architecture students were asked to design a temporary installation celebrating the 150th anniversary of the creation of the Italian Nation which occurred in 1861 thanks to the political and military action of such visionaries as Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Mazzini and Camillo Benso Count of Cavour. The installation was to be placed in an area spanning from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum and the students were asked to carefully analyze the urban characteristics of the sites they chose and produce projects with a strong urban connotation and an evocative, symbolic impact, regardless of their ephemeral character. Student work involved research concerning both the history of Italian re-unification and examples of urban scale installations from past and present times. As already mentioned the quality of the seventeen entries was generally very high and this made the job of the jury particularly difficult. In fact, the jurors, Professors Luca Peralta, Romolo Martemucci and David Sabatello had to go through three distinct evaluation phases which brought to an initial eight-project shortlist from which the four finalists were chosen and subsequently the two winning entries were nominated unanimously. The winners were proclaimed during the traditional end-of-semester reception coinciding with the exhibit of student work at the Pantheon Institute.

The Spring 2011 Thorp Prize winners are:

TEAM 2: Zack Baier (Landscape Architecture); Colleen McDonough (Architecture); Lauren Polacheck (Architecture)

TEAM 13: Ben Mahan (Architecture); Kaylynn Primerano (Landscape Architecture)