We have a winner!

According to today's Star-Ledger, President McCormick has chosen a winner in the campus design competition. The winning team is TEN Arquitectos – Enrique Norten - Wallace Roberts & Todd. Enrique Norten has become a world famous architect, with most of the built work by TEN Arquitectos either in Mexico or the NY/NJ area. Probably the closest notable building he has done was the award-winning Princeton Garage Parking Structure. WRT is already active in the area as the designer for the Main Street project in Highland Park.

The winning concept proposed a cylindric glass tower at the North end of campus which has been compared, by some, to either the classic NJ fuel tank or a frat party beer can. The campus plan featured a "red" cross axis that connected College Ave with the river and a much greener College Ave (with grass block as the surface) for the bus rapid transit that they envision.

As surprising as anything is that the winning proposal was not the plain and boring from Beyer Blinder Belle -- Ateliers Jean Nouvel -- Oehme, van Sweden & Associates. Really, I suspect that their solution would have been proven to be elegant and I really enjoy the work of both Nouvel and Oehme van Sweden, but their entry wasn't the bold sort of gamble that a design competition deserves.

UPDATE: Some of the alums and boosters that post regularly on an online sports bulletin board seem to have a different view of the winning plan. With comments like,

This is a joke gone bad.......

this group seemed to think this was one of the worst entries in the competition, disliking both the architecture and the intent behind it.