May 14, 2014 (Seattle, WA) – The Pike-Pine Renaissance by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol is one of six exemplary projects in architecture, planning, landscape architecture, and urban design that have been named winners of the 2014 Great Places Awards by the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA). The EDRA Great Places Awards recognize professional and scholarly excellence in environmental design and pay special attention to the relationship between physical form and human activity or experience. This is the second year in a row that Gustafson Guthrie Nichol has received the EDRA Award in the Place Planning category, having been recognized for Unified Ground: Union Square - National Mall Competition in 2013.

The Pike-Pine Renaissance, sponsored by the Downtown Seattle Association, was developed from a call for design guidelines for downtown streets and has expanded to a much larger advocacy for the street as the city’s greatest public space. Building on the numerous plans already in place, the team at Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) focused on broadening expectations of what it would mean to meet the client’s goals of making Seattle “America’s Best Urban Experience,” while simultaneously developing details for new construction. Pairing the practical with the highly ambitious allowed stakeholders to dream big while offering achievable incremental goals that could start in the near term.

The Pike-Pine Renaissance project boards will be on display during the 45th annual conference of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), May 28-31, 2014 in New Orleans, LA. GGN Associates Rebecca Fuchs and Kara Weaver will attend the conference to accept the award on behalf of the GGN design team, the Downtown Seattle Association, and the other project consultants, including BDS Planning & Urban Design, Downtown Works, ECONorthwest, Framework, and Toole Design Group. GGN’s Shannon Nichol is the project’s lead designer.