(MINNEAPOLIS) — Jan. 30, 2013 — Five finalists have been chosen for the final phase of the Creative City Challenge at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Nominees were selected through public voting which took place on the Minneapolis Convention Center Facebook site. Finalists and their corresponding projects include:

Futures North, LakeForms: a digitally fabricated pavilion that emerges from the Convention Center plaza. Inside the pavilion, learn about the lakes’ ecology and summer uses in an immersive sensory environment, consisting of real-time audio and visual information collected from “smart buoys” installed in the city’s lakes.

INVIVIA in collaboration with Urbain/d/rc, MIMMI: a visiting organism that collects and reflects the aggregate mood of Minneapolis, changing in color, shape, and climatic behavior depending on residents’ emotions. Everyone can enjoy MIMMI’s company and both watch and participate in her changing behavior while enjoying the city and connecting with new places and people!

JeFe Design Collective, MPLS rope densCITY: emphasizing Minneapolis’ eco-focused, healthy culture, “MPLS Rope densCity” looks to discarded rock climbing rope as a material. By anchoring, hanging, wrapping, and allowing people to swing from this discarded material, a temporary portal is created between the Minneapolis Convention Center and the city; a portal that engages site, people, and material in interactivity.

Krause + Sowinski, You Are Here: a combination of urban wayfinding with creative placemaking. The meta-map and the giant red arrow form the center of a vital diagram of downtown Minneapolis, connecting the Convention Center plaza to the best parts of the city. “You Are Here” strengthens the downtown pedestrian experience, making Minneapolis an even better place to explore.

Locus Architecture, RIPPLE: public space as sculpture activated by weather for enticing people to enjoy experiences in their city. Assembled from 20 foot steel fronds capped with LED lights, “RIPPLEʼs” urban room provides the venue for serendipitous meetings between residents and artists, visitors and aspiring gymnasts.

The goals of the Creative City Challenge are to draw residents of the city to the Minneapolis Convention Center as a central meeting space for the surrounding area as well as to provide a compelling gathering site for the Minneapolis Convention Center’s thousands of visitors spring through fall. Achieving these objectives will encourage further exploration of downtown and other areas around the city.

The purpose of the competition is to create and install a temporary, interactive, site-specific, eco-focused “portal” to the City of Minneapolis on the Plaza of the Minneapolis Convention Center beginning summer 2013. The final contenders are asked to develop a complete proposal for the project which will be juried in a public presentation Feb. 27 at 5:30 p.m. in University of Minnesota’s Rapson Hall. The presentation is a free event with reception to follow in the HGA Gallery. Tickets and reservations are not required to attend the event.

The jury will make a final selection based on how well the developer includes each element of the evaluation criteria including, Artistic Excellence, Temporary, Interactive, Site-Specific, Eco-focused, Portal and Creative Placemaking. National jurists, Mona El Khafif, associate professor of architecture and head of the URBANlab at California College of the Arts and Daily Tous Les Jours design studio will participate in the selection process.

The winning entry will be announced shortly after the public event and will receive a $50,000 all-inclusive fee to design, create, install and uninstall the project. The development will be installed in the MCC Plaza in early summer and will inhabit the space for the duration of the summer.

Minneapolis city partners for the Creative City Challenge include the office of Mayor R.T. Rybak, Minneapolis City Council and the city coordinator’s office. Additional information can be found online at www.minneapolis.org/art-in-the-plaza. The goals of the Creative City Challenge are driven by the new direction of the Minneapolis Convention Center and the City’s efforts to celebrate the creative assets of Minneapolis, aim to draw attention to the City’s natural assets and attract new talent to the area.

New research done by the City’s Arts, Culture and Creative Economy program regarding jobs and employment in the creative sector shows that Minneapolis has over four times the national average of architects and designers. While this is a cause for celebration, the data also demonstrates that jobs for architecture and designers have decreased by nearly 20% in the last ten years and nearly 10% in the last three years.