Passageways picks 5 designers to remake Chattanooga alleyways

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) – Four Downtown Chattanooga alleyways are about to get a makeover.

The Passageways program has selected five designers to reimagine the allies for public use.

“The caliber and breadth of submissions received were exciting and made the job of the juries, both a local stakeholder group and a panel of architects from the US, very difficult,” states Jared Hueter, Chairman of the AIA-Tennessee Convention, Co-Director of Passsageways and Architect at Cogent Studio. “These installations will provide something very special to our city, and I’m excited for this year’s AIA-Tennessee Convention theme of ‘Impact’ to be a reality.”

And the winners are:

• Neural Alley (New York City) – an interactive, pixelated display of the Tennessee River at 729 Broad Street.
• Stargaze (New York City) – large scale, star like beacons suspended above the alley and mimicking star behavior through a link to the Star API provided by NASA at 715 Market Street.
• Stage Genies (Chattanooga) – a soundscape installation that will detect movement and respond with sound at 715 Market Street.
• Urban Chandelier (Sydney, Australia) – a canopy of 6,000 reflective styrene triangles that will create visible light patterns at 711 Cherry Street.
• Grass Garden Inversion (Chattanooga) – a suspended network of bamboo creating interesting visual play and sound at 720 Cherry Street.

The projects will be unveiled to the public on Wednesday, August 24th.

“This kick-off event will be a first in many community centered events to happen in the Passageways spaces,” states Amy Donahue, Director of Marketing and Communication for River City Company. “River City is committed to programming these spaces for up to a year to show how they can be community hubs in Downtown.”