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The Public Recognition Award honors community members who have promoted, enhanced or strengthened the public awareness and perception of the profession of landscape architecture in Illinois. It's our vehicle for celebrating those individuals or organizations, outside of our profession, who understand the vital role we play in shaping the environment.
This year, three Chicagoans receive the award for recognizing that developing the corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Streets into what city planner and architect Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan for Chicago called 'the intellectual center of Chicago' was first and foremost a landscape project. The realization prompted them to appoint a landscape architecture firm as the project's lead.
Mayor Richard Daley, project and design director Ed Uhlir and donor organization chairman John Bryan probably didn't realize how unusual their decision was, or how much it would elevate the profile of landscape architects among other design professions and the public. For four years, landscape architects oversaw and coordinated the work of the numerous other designers, architects, contractors and city agents working on the 25-acre site - even to the point of redlining engineering drafts to eradicate conflicts that would have eliminated planting ability.
The decision paid off, though, proving that involving landscape architects from the beginning of a project produces a stronger overall design. Since its opening in July, Millennium Park has been acclaimed worldwide. It also demonstrated that a public-private funded partnership can spearhead a major public works construction project and achieve remarkable landscape and architectural design.
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