The late Edmund Bacon, born in Philadelphia during the summer of 1910, is a man whose name is synoymous with local architecture and urban planning. Former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell will speak on that very subject on February 18 at the
Pennsylvania Convention Center, where he'll also be awarded with the 8th annual Edmund N. Bacon Prize from the
Philadelphia Center for Architecture.
According to David Bender, associate director of the Center, the annual Ed Bacon Prize is awarded to a professional who has achieved a significant amount of success in urban planning, development and design. (Paul Goldberger, an architecture critic for
The New Yorker, and Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, are both past recipients.)
Rendell's achievements, Bender explains, were largely transportation-related, such as his proposal to add tolls to the Pennsylvania-wide Interstate 80. Investment in transportation infrastructure, Rendell once said, is vital to America's economic competitiveness, and is "the best job creator we have for well-paying jobs and also to help American manufacturing."
The student winners of the annual
Better Philadelphia Challenge will also be honored during the event. This year's Challenge, which is held in honor of Bacon, asked design and architecture students worldwide to imagine a future Philadelphia landscape populated with the sort of self-driving vehicles currently being designed by
Google. A $5,000 award will go to the first prize winner.
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: David Bender, AIA Philadelphia