With construction work on the new Green Point Stadium one third complete, focus is shifting to the surrounding Green Point Common and Urban Park ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The final plan for the Urban Park and redevelopment of the Common is still being finalised and needs the approval of Provincial MEC for Environment, Planning and Economic Development, Tasneem Essop.

In the meantime, a competition was launched in April to bring landscape design and architectural students from the University of Cape Town and Cape Peninsula University of Technology into the design process for one of the sections – the Mouille Point beachfront and promenade – detailing how they thought it could best be transformed ahead of 2010.

The brief required them to create a safe, spacious and aesthetic inner city park and recreation area, allowing for a diversity of uses. The students were also required to include 2010 Green Goal principles such as biodiversity, green building, mobility, water use, and waste minimisation and recycling, into the design.

The Green Goal programme aims to leave a positive environmental legacy after the 2010 FIFA World Cup by minimising its environmental impact.

The winners of the 2010 Green Goal Mouille Point Student Landscape Design Competition were announced on 8 May 2008, with Scott Masson and Marica Fick winning the top prizes.

Masson - a Masters Landscape Design student at UCT - submitted a conceptual design aiming to make the area a dynamic people-friendly facility, which is integrated with the 2010 Urban Park on Green Point Common.

Part of his design was a wetland feature, to restore part of the area to its original form.

Fick, a design student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, submitted a design for an amphitheatre, which she felt would attract people to the area.

According to Mike Marsden, Executive Director: Service Delivery Integration, the competition is the first tangible Green Goal deliverable of Cape Town's 2010 World Cup programme, and was also part of the City's strategy to extending ownership and participation of 2010, so that the city can embrace the event.

Marsden thanked the students and judges for their time, saying he was struck by the manner in which the students interpreted their brief, and the attention to detail.

"I believe the most outstanding aspect of the competition though was the creativity which was displayed and the effort and skill which went into the presentations," he said.

The City has a budget of R30-million for the project, and is in the process of appointing professional consultants for the design work. Marsden promised the work by the students will not be wasted, but fed into the consultants' brief.

"The designs will definitely be considered. The City will appoint a professional landscape designer, and these designs will be made available to them," said Lorraine Gerrans, Manager: 2010 Green Goal.

"The City will also arrange an internship with the firm that will be redesigning the promenade," she said.

The student winners won a Gerald Hoberman photography book, a helicopter trip over the new stadium and Green Point Common area, and a painted kelp vuvuzela, while the stadium contractor, Murray & Roberts/WBHO, sponsored a Green Point Stadium overall.

The judging panel included Marsden, Johan van Papendorp of OvP Associates Landscape Architects, Jake de Villiers HOD Architectural Technology from CPUT, City of Cape Town Councillors Marian Nieuwoudt, Ian Neilson and JP Smith, and Andrew Borraine, CEO of the Cape Town Partnership.