The success of architects like Richard Rogers or Von Gerkan was based on competitions: Gerkan, for example, has started his career by winning the open competition of the Airport Berlin Tegel and Richard Rogers / Renzo Piano by winning the commission for the Centre Pompidou.
Elevation of the winning design, Centre Pompidou, 1971, Renzo Piano was 34 years.
Today it's almost impossible for start-up architectural practices to participate! Prestigious competitions are limited to the illustrious circle of superstars – the "starchitects". Either they are in the jury or they participate!
It's astonishing that even the stars feel undervalued.
"We are letting ourselves be drained of endless resources and huge amounts of ideas — all to no avail,” said Koolhaas. "I am on a campaign now to convince the world that this kind of competition is hopeless and that we should find more efficient forms of architectural competitions against each other." (bdonline)
Open anonymous competition, which happened to be the beginning of many architect’s careers, have almost disappeared. You can easily see it on the German competition platform www.competionline.at: You would like to do a competition for a new school building? Have you built any school lately? How many CAD workspaces do you have? What is your yearly turnover? Such question are hard to answer for a newbie! (the German name for that? "Begrenzt offener Wettbewerb mit vorgeschaltetem Auswahlverfahren")
The remaining open competitions are questionable: Often they are marketing campaigns of big brands like the Illy / Domus coffee break competition (in April 2004 Illy and Domus has asked students and designers under the age of 35 to create new ways of enjoying coffee, 704 entrances), the Renault traffic award or the Nike Play Award. What is the benefit of attending these “brand” design contests?
Mauricio Bruna Fruns, Coffee Break competition, 2004
The enormous amounts of entrants have simply made open competitions unattractive. Ambitious projects like the competition for the Olympic Landmark in Paris (more than 400 entrances) or the Parachute Tower in Coney Island (864 entrances) are more like lottery games. Imagine a ten hour review session: How much time for each project panel? Two minutes? What an unbelievable waste on creativity!
Parachute Tower Competition Panel, 2005, no prize, Monika Hoffmann, Didem Durakbasa, Doris Kainacher, Omer Selcuk Baz, http://www.vanalen.org/competitions/ConeyIsland/exhibit/gallery/main.swf
Competitions still attract architects - it's the myth of fast success! Definitely, we should think about more appropriate methods to honor creative services.
January 16, 2007
The Myth of Competition.
label:
competitions
by
Christoph ,anarchitecture
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comment(s):
I am very agree with you. We have to find better way to better design without wasting too much time and money. Anybody had good idea?
About doing competitions: don't forget the fact that in most european countries your are even not allowed to participate in competitions because after graduation you can't call yourself an architect! It's maybe for the better?
Times had changed... Things are much harder today than 20 or 30 years ago. The only way for us architects is another world war so that we can rebuid from the ground up. Unfortunetly.
The address of the german internet platform is http://www.competitionline.de/
Post a Comment