Real-world experience can be worth plenty -- as much as $50,000.
That's the amount of money a team of five ASU graduate students could win at the end of the month when they again present their proposal for the Urban Land Institute Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition.
The team -- comprised of Timothy Parke, Parul Mittal and Prasoon Kumar, all of whom are environmental planning graduate students, Matthew Muller, an architecture graduate student, and Mohan Sankrit, a business graduate student -- was named a finalist in the competition last month.
Three other finalist teams -- Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a combined team from Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley -- are competing for the top prize.
Their task was to submit designs for an actual 57-acre piece of waterfront property on the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh, Pa. that would economically revitalize the area and reconnect it to the greater community.
While the competition's Web site makes clear there's no guarantee any of the proposals will be implemented, it's the experience that counts, members of the group said.
"I've definitely learned more doing this project than in any classroom," Parke said.
With 10 days to submit a proposal after the site was released in mid-January, the team met for five or six hours a night and 18 hours each day on the weekend.
They laid out development plans for the site for up to 20 years from now, combining elements of urban design, sustainable design and economic feasibility.
"The cross-disciplinary aspect is a great opportunity," said Catherine Spellman, the team's faculty adviser and associate professor in the School of Architecture.
"In school, the students are usually working individually, and in reality that's not the case. It takes hundreds of people to put a project together," she said.
If the team wins the top prize, $5,000 of it goes to the departments to which the students belong, and the rest will be divided equally among the five students.
Teams that don't place first will receive $10,000.
But of course Muller, like the rest of his team, wants to win.
He said he might travel to Kenya with his $9,000 share of the winnings.
"I graduate in May so I was thinking of taking a nice vacation," he said.
Reach the reporter at ilan.brat@asu.edu.
