NOODLE SOUP is the winning 2018 Ragdale Ring design

The quirky concept NOODLE SOUP by the young Columbus, Ohio-based design team of Galo Cañzares and Stephanie Sang Delgado has been named the winning entry in the 2018 Ragdale Ring competition. 

The annual artists' residency in Lake Forest, Illinois invited proposals to design, build, and exhibit the Ragdale Ring, a temporary outdoor theater, where summer concerts, performances, and events can take place, while reinterpreting the original Ragdale Ring garden theater designed in 1912 by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw.

"We are beyond excited to have the opportunity to realize our design," Galo Cañizares Proaño said upon learning of their winning entry. "Having Ragdale's support means a lot to us as young designers, and we can't wait to be a part of Ragdale's upcoming program of events and to promote art and design in various ways during our stay there."

Cañzares and Delgado will receive a $15,000 production grant, as well as studio, room, and board during the 18-day design/build residency from May 28 through June 15.

Read on for more information we have received from the Ragdale Foundation.

"The concept of Noodle Soup emerged from the architects’ intention to empower the individual user to be engaged as a performer as well as to blend whimsy, playfulness and interaction into a transformable constructed landscape. NOODLE SOUP features a set of fixed structures around which are soft, linear, pliable pieces of furniture. The soft elements can interact with the hard structures to serve functional purposes such as seating, but they can also act as oversized toys, freely configurable in a variety of ways. The environment will be accompanied by a small web-based app called 'Ragdale’s Noodle Soup Cookbook,' which will provide visitors with possible arrangements for the landscape. Noodle Soup will be an interactive playscape, flexible enough for a range of performances, and picturesque enough for it to seamlessly integrate into the scenery of Lake Forest."

"Recent graduates, Stephanie Sang Delgado received her Master of Architecture degree from the Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University in Columbus in 2015, while Galo Cañizares received his Master of Architecture degree from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in Cambridge in 2013. Their broad-based design portfolio includes 'Blue, A Set Design' for the documentary play 'Finish Line: Untold Stories of the 2013 Boston Marathon;' 'Air Operations, An Installation,' 2017; 'Three Acts of Architecture, A Gallery Show' 2017; and Malevi.ch, A Web App."

The 2018 jury comprised four members of the 2017 Ring architectural collaborative T+E+A+M from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Zurich Esposito, AIA Chicago; Phil Rosborough, Rosborough Partners; Jeffrey Meeuwsen and Regin Igloria, Ragdale.

Here is what jury members had to say about NOODLE SOUP.

Juror Zurich Esposito, Executive Vice President of AIA Chicago: "NOODLE SOUP is visually engaging and extremely flexible. It will provide infinite staging possibilities that will certainly create moments of magic for Ragdale's outdoor setting." 

Members of T+E+A+M: "This is the clear winner for us. It feels like a new category compared to previous years. Importantly, it offers a new response to a long-standing disciplinary problem: how to balance design authorship with the desire to let users reconfigure their environment. NOODLE SOUP becomes a truly interactive lawn game at a bodily scale while also providing necessary seating and adaptability to different performance requirements."

Jeff Meeuwsen, Ragdale's Executive Director: "The project's two leads, Cañzares and Sang Delgado, are passionate about design education for youth. In addition to delivering a successful Ragdale Ring, they are uniquely qualified to foster connections between our Ragdale in Schools program, High School Arts Week, and their design practice. Engaging young people may be one key focus of a special web-app they are developing to accompany the project, a 'cookbook' for their noodle soup."