The Steedman Fellowship is awarded biannually since 1925 on the basis of an International Design Competition. The title of the 2002 Steedman International Design Competition is Meeting of the Rivers. The competition jury consisted of Juhani Pallasmaa, Patricia Patkau, Glenn Murcutt, Ann Rivers Mack, Tom Oslund, and Bill Wischmeyer. The project was awarded First Prize and the Steedman Travel Fellowship. Jury statement:
The project combines most successfully the riverside landscape and buildings of the Interpretive Center into an entity, which is a poetic expression of its context and task. The project proposes the reclamation of the former wetland as part of its exhibits and demonstrations of the Center.
The site is situated at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, which together create the Great Rivers watershed covering 102 million square miles, or one-eighth of the area of the North American continent. The design for the Steedman Competition began with an idea for structuring the site to restore a wetland ecosystem along the Mississippi River. The project focused on how the buildings engaged the ground and organize a stormwater drainage system to create a progression of wetlands and gardens. The design deconstructed the building program for an interpretive center into a series of foundations for building fragments that reflected the meander and fragmentation of rivers, and resonated with the transient landscape of barge traffic.