Celebrating the Arts, Sciences, Technology and much more, Urban Art Lab Salt Lake City – 6970 is an urban implementation competition proposal that consist of installations, art interventions and new, truly public spaces within specific city blocks in a Southwestern City of the United States [and beyond].

First Prize Jury Award 2013 in the International Competition 

2014 AIA Utah Urban Design Merit Award

Publicly driven Guerilla installations, Art Containers, events, installations and activities take over abandoned and underutilized spaces and transform them into usable public space to improve the quality of downtown [areas]. Some interventions, such as spatial occupancies, might have a temporary character, whereas others provide a more permanent urban enrichment, offering a refreshing, democratic contrast to the solely consumption-driven Shopping-Mall Temple to the north of the project site. Events appear in different locations, coincide, create, offer, and disappear. Through overlapping of physical and digital space, new platforms of urban expression emerge, offering an atlas of commercial and communal activities that will slowly take over the new center of the City.

Urban Art Lab’s central location and its performative and artistic flexibility offers an important anchoring function for an expanding future-repertoire of activities, providing a significant Epicenter and new center for the City’s future social and urban development. Through the flexibility of the proposal – interventions function as micro events as well as in context to other implementations – an enduring and sustainable revival of blocks 69/70 is assured.

The project team proposed Art, Architecture, Design and other artistic events and exhibitions as the backbone of the project. Those reach across racial stereotypes, religious barriers, and socio-economical levels and prejudices, and will create a sense of belonging for all occupants of the city. 

Within this open, international urban design competition with more than 200 global entries, the project was awarded with one of only two jury awards.

Project Blackboard: 

Design: 2013

Idea Competition only

Size: 20 acre or 2 Salt Lake City Blocks (660' x 1,320')

Direct construction cost: N/A

Urban Design, Architecture: Jörg Rügemer, Co-Founder of Urban Art Lab, 2013

Art Concept: C. Greub

Visualization competition: J.Bringard

Visualization Schematic Design: Liz Yonashiro

Competition Model: Plastic Banana

Client: City of Salt Lake City, American Institute of Architects Utah