Lemay wins top honors for “Re-imagine a NYC Icon” competition

Lemay's re-imagine of 200 Park Avenue - New York, NY

New York, NY Canada’s leading integrated design services firm Lemay  has won highest honors in the “Re-imagine a New York City Icon,” the 2016 Design Challenge sponsored by Metals in Construction magazine and the Ornamental Metal Institute of New York. Inspired by the U.S. Climate Action Plan and the Architecture 2030 Challenge, the mandate of the open international competition was to re-imagine 200 Park Ave.(MetLife Building).

Lemay’s proposal, titled “Farm Follows Fiction,” was honored as one of the winners of the competition, which had 109 participants from around the world. Five other proposals shared top honors with Lemay, including FXFOWLE, SHoP and AECOM. Created through a collaborative design effort led by the design innovation cell LemayLAB and involving multidisciplinary talents from Lemay’s Sustainability and Escobar Design teams, as well as from Ecosystem and Sefaira – two firms specialized in energy efficiency – the concept was to reposition the architectural icon while reducing its energy consumption by targeting a net zero carbon footprint.

With a bold visual style inspired by graphic novels, the proposal playfully narrated how the MetLife building could be transformed into a collective resource for the Midtown community, therefore becoming the world’s tallest farm. The concept also innovates by proposing that the new building actively promotes healthy lifestyles and quality of life, thus embodying the insurance company’s core mission.

During the unveiling of the winners, the jury commented that the Lemay proposal was inspiring and clearly visionary, ie “a project for the future of building”, and an essential project that exudes the level of innovation required to achieve the Architecture 2013 Challenge.

The panel of six competition jurors included some of the best-known experts in sustainable design from the fields of architecture and engineering: Ben Tranel, AIA, LEED AP, of Gensler; Areta Pawlynsky, AIA, of Heintges; Billie Faircloth, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, of Kieran Timberlake; Fiona Cousins, PE, LEED AP BD+C, of Arup; Sameer Kumar, AIA, LEED AP, of SHoP; and Hauke Jungjohann of Thornton Tomasetti.