Wednesday 21st April Westport Cineplex - 6.30pm -- The winners of this year's Town of Tomorrow Competition will receive their prizes at a special awards ceremony in the Westport Cineplex on Wednesday 21st April. All welcome.

The prizes will be presented to the winning students by Ms Daniela Brica from Google in Switzerland. Daniela and her colleague Craig D'Andrea, based at the Google Earth facility in Colorado, were the judges of this year's competition to find the most imaginative way to `virtually' redesign the Heritage Town of Westport in Ireland.

 More information: Ann Moore, Town Clerk, Westport Civic Offices, Westport, Co Mayo, Ireland Tel: + 353 (0)98 25888

Background Information:

 Westport Town of Tomorrow. Urban Design Competition 2010 with Google SketchUp

 Westport, the first town in Ireland to have been modelled in 3D and hosted on Google Earth is running its third Town of Tomorrow Urban Design Competition. The competition is again supported by Google, The Mayo News and Westport Town Council.

 The 2009 competition involved over forty students from Westport secondary schools together with a number of third level Architectural Technology undergraduates from Galway & Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) Castlebar Campus. This year it is anticipated that the competition will involve additional third level and international participants.

 CHALLENGE

 The competition is based on the ground-breaking 3D computer model of the Heritage Town of Westport commissioned by the Town Council - pioneers in the use of such 3D digital technology for both urban planning and online tourism.

 The challenge is quite simply to take a portion of Westport as it now exists, imagine it as it could be and then build a model of what you have imagined.

 The competition involves the re-design of the centre of Westport using the popular software Google SketchUp7 - downloadable Free simply google `Google SketchUp7' - not Pro!

 Each school and college is asked to promote the competition to whatever age group of students they believe appropriate and enter as many teams as possible.

 Once we have received the submissions we will arrange to visit each school / college to deliver a master copy of the Westport3D model in Google SketchUp format and to introduce the competition to the students as well as providing whatever training is necessary.

 Peter Hynes Westport Town Manager commented, "Each team chooses a section of the town to work with. The design brief is purposely non prescriptive so that participants can take full advantage of the software, whilst making the maximum use of their imagination."

 There are prizes for the winning teams from each institution plus an overall prize for the best entry. Further details will be available later in the year.

Judges

 As in previous years we are very privileged to have two eminent judges, these are: Daniela Brica the European 3D Captain for Google Earth based in Zurich and her colleague Craig D'Andrea from Google Earth Colorado.

 Awards Ceremony

 The 2010 awards ceremony will once again take place in the Westport Cineplex in the early evening of Wednesday 21st April 2010.