thanks for posting these, i live about 5 minutes away from Shelby Farms and was curious when they would submit their proposals.

Man...
I didn't realize the scale of the site. Is it bigger or smaller than Central Park or the corn field site in LA?
Having only heard third hand of the competition. I usually find FO to be my favorite but i really like Hargreaves and Tom Leader...
Who i have never heard of before. I will have to check out some more of his work.

Shelby Farms Park is 4500 acres. Central Park is 843 acres and the Cornfield is 32 acres.

without knowing the substance of any of these from the images (too small) and without researching further (which i'll probably do, 'cause this is pretty cool) i'll offer my initial reaction: hargreaves' ribbons of water scheme is gorgeous!

the hargreaves' scheme is not only the more aesthetically pleasing scheme, but also addresses the true nature of the park. the other two schemes include programmatic elements that are out of place with the character of the park and that region of Memphis.

i also like the multiplicity of centers that the hargreaves' scheme offers, either way my commute to work will be dramatically improved.

Andrew. I too was especially struck by the amount of water space that the Hargreaves entry programmed.

Was Shelby Farms land previous wetlands. Was their plan reflecting a wet past or just creating new?

namhenderson-

Shelby Farms is a very large swath of land that, over time, has been subdivided into several different segments. One of those is an artificial wetlands that is flooded every winter, but other sections of the park are host to small lakes and sections of the Wolf River (a tributary of the Mississippi).

I like FO's . Food security

Induct.

Good point. Food security is a growing "political" issue. The upside of the issue is that it can be locally addressed quite successfully.
Also, it is a quite literal take on the Shelby Farms name....

FOs seems to be the least contrived and gentlest manipulation of the site while also providing the same level of intensity of experience as the other schemes. While there are moments of signature FO style, the design is very well scaled for the site and has the best genius loci of all the proposals. They created a design for the park that feels like Memphis and not New York City.

I like parts of TLs scheme, but parts seem like through back to a beaux arts organization, or maybe a little burle marx, or maybe New York City. the circular pond works in plan but would it work as a place and node for the entire park? I do like their programing efforts and organization of the boards.

Hargreaves looks like a pastiche of every other Hargreaves design of the past 20 years -please not again! Not every place needs braided water with plasticine berms - maybe in the rocky mountains, but not Tennessee with oxbows, backwater swamps, or limestone ridges. this scheme also seems the most expensive and least tolerant of phasing with the massive earthworks required to sculpt the land into the plasticine forms he's obsessed with. overall the pieces of this scheme seem very arbitrary and overly intellectual...

food security in a park is fun and very appropriate. Not entirely a novel idea to make an agricultural park, check out the bordeaux botanical garden, or the battery park wheat field installation, or the corn fields project....

weighs in on the schemes...

re: pruned... http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2195/2345296408_0c7dd29556_o.jpg
what kind of firefly foodcoloring did they put in the "water"? :-)
a big problem concept w/aerial views is that few people will experience that view (often). ("those look like ants." "nah, they can't be brontosauri.")

there's always the burlesque marxist concept to consider. or if prefer a conservative approach, the mccain motto: bomb bomb bomb it, then occupy it for 100s of years.

that photochopped thing with the girl holding a carrot (and a row of pale purple flowers that look like liatris?) is skewy hilarious. pickup sticks with photos.

i note there has been no follow up here.

field operations won this one.