Truth be told, the thought to compare the two had never occurred to me.

But it did occur to Ed Slipek, Senior Contributing Editor of Style Weekly Magazine when he recently visited the Menokin Revealed exhibit at the Virginia Center for Architecture.

In his article Material World in the current issue, Slipek focuses on the importance of making the open call for plans and ideas when undertaking a large project such as the Shockoe Bottom proposed baseball stadium.

The lesson of ‘Ruins, Memory and the Imagination: Menokin Revealed‘ is: How do we know a good solutions unless they’re set up against alternatives? Wouldn’t it be great to have 11 more design proposals for Shockoe Bottom? The process might make us crazy, but then again, it could produce something quite worthwhile.

While Menokin Revealed was an academic exercise for the Harvard Graduate School of Design students of The Menokin Project’s lead architect, Jorge Silvetti, their ideas and images are thought provoking and inspiring.