A Searchable Database on the Internet of The Waterfront Center's

Excellence on the Waterfront Awards Program Winners 1987-2020

 

                                               Search Engine Movie                       Enter Queries                             

Exploring the Search Engine

The Waterfront Center has loaded information about almost all the awards granted by the Waterfront Center since 1987 into a searchable database linked to our webpage, see more detail in the Introduction below.

    The search engine stores information in the following categories: Award Year, Award Category, Project Type, Project Name, Award City, Award State, Award Country, Entrants Names, Award Organization, Organization Website, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Phone, Contact E-Mail, Project Description, Jury Comments.  You can enter a search in any of these categories.  If  you enter 2011 for example you will see a list of all the awards granted in that year.  Click on the award name of one of the projects and you will see all the information, including images, about that project.  If you entered a country, Korea for example, you will see all the awards granted for that country. 

    The search engine also scans the text of the project description so if you search for park for example you will see not only the projects categorized as parks but also those that have the word park in their project description or jury comments. To view only those projects categorized as Park awards click on those projects labeled Park in the Award Category column.

Introduction

 
    In 1981 Ann Breen and Dick Rigby founded the Waterfront Center, a non-profit educational organization, in the belief that waterfronts — where the land meets the ocean, bay, lake, river or canal — are unique, finite resources. The mission of the Center is to advance, through its educational work and advocacy, the most beneficial and diverse use of community waterfront resources in the long-term public interest.
              
                         Ann Breen                             Waterfront Center                             Dick Rigby                         
 
    In 1987 the Waterfront Center began the “Excellence on the Waterfront Awards Program,” initiated with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts Design Arts Program and the National Marine Manufacturers Association, to recognize top-quality design and development work from around the world. Entries are for comprehensive plans, built projects and student work. The Center also recognizes grassroot citizen’s efforts through a Clearwater Award named for the non-profit group of that name working to clean up the Hudson River in New York.

    Over the years the stature of this awards program has grown internationally. In 2012 seven of the ten awards came from outside the U.S., including Malta, New Zealand and Singapore  The Waterfront Center is known as an independent institution and the judgments rendered by the awards juries are seen as unbiased recognition based on merit.  Honor awards are increasingly sought after and prized. The initial announcement of each year’s awards comes during the Center’s annual conference on waterfront planning, development and culture.
 
    Since the start of the program the Waterfront Center has presented awards to 370 recipients. Since 2004, popular, 20-page illustrated booklets have been prepared each year to publicize the winning projects, and more recently  the winners have been posted HERE.

Goal
 
    The goal of this project is to create an interactive digital database with information about all the projects that have won awards in the Waterfront Center "Excellence on the Waterfront Awards Program" and to make it freely available to the public in an accessible form. The 25-year record documents some of the best thinking on waterfront planning and design from around the world.
 
    The information in the database includes the name of the project, illustrative images, descriptive text, jury comments, and identifying characteristics to allow interactive searches.  The database is built with software that would allow searches to be made to extract projects of particular interest.
 
    The database is posted on the Internet as a free resource linked to the Waterfront Center’s existing, actively-used web site . This unique resource, available no where else, is a valuable reference for designers, developers, planners, and students.