A design called Broad VUE submitted by a team from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design & The Wharton School MBA Program won first place in an environmental real estate competition sponsored by New York University's Schack Institute of Real Estate.

The competition was open to graduate students around the world, provided an opportunity to develop innovative models of sustainable real estate development and redevelopment with other graduate students from a range of disciplines. The winning team received a prize of $25,000.

It was the First Annual Sustainable Real Estate Development Competition for the Center for the Sustainable Built Environment at the Schack Institute.

Second place went to the HUDSONgreen project design, jointly submitted by a team from NYU Schack and Columbia University.

In third place was [RE]POWER, a redevelopment proposal for the city of Yonkers. It was designed by a team from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

The main objective of the competition was to foster innovative thinking among graduate students by connecting real estate development decision analysis, strategic planning, and social and environmental responsibility, says Constantine Kontokosta, director of the Center for the Sustainable Built Environment.

“Only by exploring new ideas can we create a vision for a more sustainable urban future. This goal has clearly been achieved by our first-ever student competition.”

The competition gave students the chance to display their work and ideas before influential real estate professionals, says Kontokosta. “A contest like this will open a lot of doors for these winning teams.”

The teams were required to select a site and develop a comprehensive proposal for a real estate development or redevelopment project that responds to a pressing environmental or social concern.

They were given a "problem statement" addressing a global priority related to social or environmental sustainability. Teams were required to respond to the problem statement in a way that was innovative, financially feasible and replicable.