CONDITIONS Magazine on "The Future of Competitions"

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Competition is an inherent mechanism of life in general, a part the evolutionary process of nature, and plays a role in almost all fields of culture. Few disciplines or professions have embraced the competition as vigorously as architecture. There is a widespread belief that architects enjoy competing, and are willing to risk their income in the process. Does architecture appeal especially to competitive individuals?

The current issue of CONDITIONS is dedicated to the future potential of architectural competitions and explores both the failure and the potential of competitions to promote quality and evolution in architecture. This builds further on the agenda of the previous double issue, which focused on the notion of quality in architecture politics, and how to achieve it.

To investigate the many aspects and challenges of the topic, CONDITIONS launched an architectural idea competition entitled “The Future of Competitions”. The results of the competition are forming the backbone of the current issue, along with articles and interviews exploring from different angles the historic and contemporary role of architectural competitions.

Jury verdict: The Future of Competitions “TELL THEM WHAT THEY NEED”.

The jury meetings were held in November 2010 in Oslo, Norway at Gallery 0047. Altogether 48 ‘competition of competition’ entries were evaluated.

The submitted material is quite diverse representing a range of very different formats including short text messages, e-mails, digital movies, sound bites, diagrammatical representations, boards with written statements, letters of recommendations, actual design proposals, boards with written dialogs, explicit images with hidden messages, cartoons and hand drawings.

The jury decided to nominate one first and one second prize:

A first prize of 2,000 € goes to “Q&A – An experienced architect shares her perspective on architectural competitions of today and a possible tomorrow in a session of questions and answers” by Martti Kalliala.

The project “Q+A” takes the format of a fictitious interview. This work is powerful as a succinct criticism of the status quo of architectural competitions, from its unsustainable linear logics (action, reaction, result) to the ‘limited professional territory’ in which architects operate.

A compelling analogy is made by Q+A to the incredulous moment in American history – the design of the voyager golden disk – a tool, which would be able to describe in very few words the nature of our existence on the planet earth. Competition processes predicate this type of communication oversimplification.

A second prize of 500 € goes to anonymous letter: “To whom it may concern” by Florian Kossak and Tatjana Schneider.

Two entries were recommended for honourable mentioning: “CoCrOACH” by Cristina Ampatzidou and Teresa Papachristou, as well as “WarPanel” by Department of Unusual Certainties (Christopher Pandolfi and Brendan Cormier).

The jury would also like to mention: “So you want to launch an architectural competition….why?” by Conceptual Devices (Antonio Scarponi and Stefano Massaand) and “picture_urban_hack_to_visualize_the_common_austrian_conservative_political_
consciousness_through_infra_red_led’s_only_visable_by_mobile_phone_cameras.jpg” by Hannes Langguth.