The six panelists include Toshiko Mori, Chair of the Department of Architecture of the Harvard Design School and Richard N. Swett, the only architect to serve in Congress during the 20th Century.

Additional members of the panel are Eugenie L. Birch, FAICP, Professor and Chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania; arts and management consultant Kinshasha Holman Conwill; Terence Riley, Chief Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art; and Michael Van Valkenburgh, principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc. Landscape Architects PC in New York City and Boston and the Charles Eliot Professor of Practise of landscape Architecture at Harvard University.

The panel will narrow the field of candidates to 15 to 20, out of which the LMDC will select five teams by early October to prepare additional concept plans for the next phase of the planning process.