For Dijana Alickovic, Brooke Merrell and Yan Sun, the $1,000 in prize money for winning a TRAX station design competition was not the highlight.
Knowing that their design would be considered for actual use by UTA designers and architects in stations currently under development was the climax.
“The competition was very much a learning experience,” Alickovic said. “We tried to implement what we have learned so far regarding architecture and planning.”
Two other groups of U architecture students also had winning designs in the competition, which was held to generate ideas for the designs of future southwest TRAX stations, Hal Johnson, UTA project manager, said.
Daniel Kidd, David Hulsberg and Steven Duncan, along with John Holbrook, Terrell Bodily, Larry Orton and Thomas Newman, also won $1,000 for their groups.
The students designed stations for both a suburban and an urban situation-specifically stations for 2700 West and for the Daybreak community on the west bench-over the winter break. Sun said his group worked on their design for 60 hours over three weeks.
Students were asked to focus on four different solutions UTA anticipates being problematic: flow, trees, ticket machines and seating.
Alickovic’s group chose to create a design that would have a separation of pedestrian traffic and waiting areas.
“The ribbon space design reflects the growth and movement occurring in South Jordan and Daybreak,” Alickovic said.
“We were looking for new schemes that the communities would want as a part of their urban design,” Greg Thorp, manager of light-rail construction for UTA, said.
Johnson said he admired the quality of design the submittals showed.
“The groups met or exceeded professional quality standards for conceptual designs,” he said. “We have passed the concepts to the designers of the Mid-Jordan TRAX Line for evaluation and further discussion.”
Johnson noted that a similar competition was held to develop ideas for Bus Rapid Transit canopies. He said that the winning station concepts were further developed and designed and expects the station designs to do the same.
“The most impressive part to me is that the students did this work outside the course of a semester and not for an academic grade and no guarantee of financial compensation,” he said.
“We learned a lot about teamwork through this competition,” Sun said. “Developing a design concept with other people is very different from working alone.”