News: Arch Nexus and the Women in Architecture Design Competition
Two Arch | Nexus intern architects, Ardivan Tookaloo and Elahe Zarehzadeh, have teamed with Zahra Hassanipour (FFKR) Reihaneh Noori (University of Utah), Massih Nilforoushan (VCBO), and Mehran Rezcan (GSBS) to create a winning submission for the 2016 Design Competition sponsored by Salt Lake County and Women in Architecture SLC. This year, the competition focused on “Girls in Design”, the goal of which is to design and build a structure in Sunnyvale Park in West Valley City for the Utah refugee soccer team.
Sunnyvale Park is an environment where refugees and their children who live within the area can come together as a community to enjoy watching soccer, enhance relationships, and develop skills. To understand the needs to this community, the designers met with many of the soccer players to determine what type of structure would best enhance the park.
One of the children’s suggestions (among the requests for a Justin Bieber statue) was for activities to do on the side when they weren’t able to play soccer. This led to the idea and design of a structure which features a target net, practice wall, protective nets to prevent injury, and flexible seating. The structure is designed to be portable, in the case it needs to be relocated from Sunnyvale Park, and is made of simple materials- wood, rope, and bicycle tires to promote sustainability, budget, and to demonstrate that materials like these can be creatively and aesthetically repurposed.
The soccer practice wall is projected to be finished by mid-September. To learn more about Women In Architecture in Salt Lake City and this design competition, please click here.