Jamaican Wins Boston (USA) Community Design Competition

Congratulations to Jamaican Gregory Minott and his team members Troy DePeiza and Snehal Intwala. Keep 'teking it to dem'!

Jamaican Wins Boston Community Design Competition
Story from The Jamaica Observer

Jamaican Gregory Minott and team members Troy Depeiza and Snehal Intwala won the US$10,000 prize for Best Design for Building in the Dudley Square Community Charrette and Design Competition.

The Boston Society of Architects hosted the competition in association with the City of Boston, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Common Boston and the Roxbury Masterplan Oversight Committee, as part of the public programming for the American Institute of Architects' 2008 National Convention in Boston.

The design competition focused on a parcel in Boston's Dudley Square neighbourhood that will become available with the removal of the two vacant buildings and the relocation of a police station. Prizes were awarded in four categories that Boston Mayor Tom Menino described as "the components at the heart of the city's strategy for the revitalisation of Dudley".

Teams drafted preliminary designs and then participated in a design workshop, in which they received advice and critiques from neighbourhood residents.

"(Their submission) was the most compelling in the sense that we could actually imagine it being built," said Kairos Shen, Boston's chief planner and a member of the jury that judged the 14 competition entries in a release to the media. "We all thought that, if you could do this, it would truly make the square a better place."

Minott's passion for making urban environments better places for people to live, work and play propelled him to enter the competition.

Born in Kingston, he lived in Mandeville and attended Belair High School, where he developed his love for art and architecture. He completed his bachelor's degree in architecture in 1997 from The Caribbean School of Architecture at the University of Technology (UTech).

He subsequently worked as an intern-architect for Lascelles Dixon and Associates in Kingston before going overseas to further his studies on a full scholarship at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

There he received design awards for his projects, and completed a Masters of Architecture and Infrastructure Planning in 2002. He then worked for firms in Manhattan, New York, and New Jersey before moving to Boston in 2004, where he now works for Elkus-Manfredi Architects.

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