The winners of the Vancouver viaducts/Eastern Core ideas competition, known as re:CONNECT, were announced Thursday night at an awards ceremony at the Woodwards Building.

A five-person jury of “urban experts” selected winners in three categories (Connecting the Core, Visualizing the Viaducts, and the Wild Card) for two competition entry streams, free and fee.

The free entry stream was directed toward people from any background (and was free to enter), while the fee stream was geared toward design professionals like architects, engineers, and urban planners (it cost money to enter but there were cash prizes). Meanwhile, for the people's choice portion of the competition, the city says more than than 15,000 votes were cast online, along with 1,500 comments. Needless to say, there were a lot of winners and honourable mentions (Entry No.113 should win an award for most visually interesting).

But since the “visualizing the viaducts” category was the most anticipated, we thought we would give special mention to that winner here (scroll down for links to the other winning proposals). 

And the submission that took home the prestigious people's choice award in that category was… submission No.71 by Norman Hotson, Won Kang, Gavin Schaefer and Noreen Taylor, of which Jim Green is listed as the principal.

“Viaducts gone! Let’s realize the dream of our anti-freeway heroes of yesterday with a bold new strategy of parks and public places. Showcasing history and sustainability, let’s reconnect eastside neighbourhoods and Downtown to False Creek with upper and lower green spaces, museums, monuments and elegant boulevards. Let’s repair urban rhythms without impacting traffic, with great improvements for nature, recreation, non-motorized movement, views and living. Why wait – let’s do this now!” the pitch reads.

It’s important to note that none of the winners have any guarantee of being included in the final design for the actual projects. The City of Vancouver has insisted from the get-go that the competition was a way to incite public discussion and begin the flow of ideas. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean the winners (or any of the applicants, for that matter) won’t have an effect on the future of the sites.

In any event, here are the winners from all the other categories:

Connecting the Core

• Fee stream: Entry No. 46
• Free stream: Entry No.13 
• People’s Choice: (co-winners) Entry No. 34 and Entry No. 100

Visualizing the Viaducts

• Fee stream: (four way tie, aka "awards for merit") Entry No. 71, Entry No. 72, Entry No. 113 and Entry No. 138
• Free stream: The judges, for some reason, decided not to choose a winner and instead merely awarded an “honourable mention” to Entry No. 111
• People’s Choice: Like we mentioned before, Entry No. 71

Wildcard

• Fee stream: Entry No. 60
• Free stream: (co-winners) Entry No. 19 and Entry No. 50
• People’s Choice: Entry No. 56

That is quite a lengthy list of winners. I’d say it looks like the five urban experts weren’t looking to hurt too many feelings.

In any case, I think it’s fair to say Entry No. 71 was the night's big winner with both the people’s choice award and the “award of merit”. Take a look at the winnering proposals and see what you think. We’ll be eagerly awaiting to see how much consideration the city gives these ideas when they get working on the official plans in the future.