Professors Alissa North and Pete North (North Design Office) have been awarded second prize in Envisioning Gateway - an international public design competition to create a new vision for Gateway National Recreation Area, a 26,600-acre national park located in New York.

The competition, launched in January, was an open call for ideas to transform Gateway and begin a real dialogue about its future as an iconic national park. Stretching from Queens, across parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, to the northern tip of New Jersey, it is one of the largest urban national parks in the United States.

The Gateway competition drew 230 entrants from 23 countries. Of the 230 entries, 182 were from the United States, including 91 from the tri-state area, 16 from Virginia and 14 from Massachusetts. International submissions totaled 48, with 10 from Canada, 5 from Japan, 4 from France, 4 from The United Kingdom, and the remaining from Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan.

Their design, titled Reassembling Ecologies, is featured online at www.vanalen.org/gateway > Community Forum > Press

North Design Office was assisted in their submission by landscape architecture student Leslie Morton (MLA 2008).