The nonprofit pushing to build an elevated park across the Anacostia River has selected six teams to move on to the next phase of the design competition.

In Phase 1, 240 firms registered to show their interest and 41 teams formally submitted proposals. The 11th Street Bridge Park's jury selected six teams of landscape architects and architects, who next will interview in person; four will move on to create renderings of their proposals.

So while we're nowhere near yet seeing what these designers have envisioned for the 11th Street Bridge Park, Elevation DC looked at what these firms have previously done to get an idea of their approach. 


Team 1: Balmori Associates / Cooper, Robertson and Partners
Both firms are based in New York. Cooper, Robertson & Partners has designed a number of parks in and around New York, including Zuccotti Park, the site of the Occupy protests. Pictured: Museum Park in Miami, Fla.


Team 2: Piet Oudolf with Glenn LaRue Smith/PUSH Studio / WXY architecture + urban design

Oudolf is a Dutch garden designer who created the landscape of New York's High Line.

Above: A rendering of the "Seaglass Carousel" that WXY designed for Battery Park, NYC.


Team 3: OLIN/OMA
OLIN will be familiar to D.C. residents as the firm behind Canal Park in the Capitol Riverfront and the National Gallery's sculpture garden. Pictured: OLIN's winning entry to a competition to design a new pedestrian bridge in Pittsburgh.


Team 4: Stoss Landscape Urbanism/Höweler+Yoon Architecture
Above, see Stoss's entry to a design competition to revitalize Minneapolis's waterfront. The idea, which did not win, revolves around floating barges.


Team 5: Wallace Roberts + Todd (WRT) / NEXT Architects
NEXT designed a bridge in the Netherlands, in a town called Monster, designed to attract bats. Shouldn't these facts be worth extra points? At any rate, see above WRT's design for turning a railroad trestle in Bethlehem, Pa to a park.



Team 6: Ken Smith Landscape / Davis Brody Bond

DBB's D.C. cred is hard to overlook: the firm designed the G8Way Pavilion in Congress Heights, two DC libraries (Shaw and Benning) and is part of the design team for the forthcoming National Museum of African American History and Culture.

As mentioned above, the six teams now will be interviewed by the competition's jury, and four will be asked to submit proposals. The winning design will be selected in mid-October.