In spring 2013, Mayor Ed Lee announced an exploration of the potential of removing Highway 280 north of 16th Street in San Francisco. The tradition of removing freeways is not a new one for our city– two neighborhoods, the Embarcadero and Hayes Valley, have enjoyed a renaissance through freeway demolition that healed scarred communities. Submit your ideas for new possibilities for what lies beneath Highway 280.

Competition participants are invited to submit concepts for public art, buildings, landscape treatments, public amenities and infrastructure, or other urban design interventions that are made possible through the replacement of the elevated Highway 280 north of 16th Street with a surface boulevard. Suggested areas of focus are the parcels of land freed up by this transformation, especially along the western edge of Mission Bay, as well as the open space/landscape opportunities at the west end of Mission Creek to unify both sides of the creek. Entrants are welcome to submit concepts that explore any aspect of the trans-formative opportunities introduced by the freeway removal.

Competition Details:

• Open to artists, academics, architects, planners, landscape architects and designers
• There is no entry fee
• $10,000 in prizes to be awarded

Entrants are asked to submit project plans for either ONE or ALL of the Land Parcels indicated on the Site Map; if choosing to focus solely on one land parcel, you may select any of the six. If you choose to focus on all land parcels, you must submit project plans for all six land parcels.Interested participants must register online by July 31, 2013 at 1:00 p.m. PST. Additional information is available at: www.cadsf.org/seed

The competition is presented by the Center for Architecture + Design and seedfund, and co-sponsored by the AIA San Francisco, Studio for Urban Projects, SPUR, AF, and the San Francisco Planning Department.