Architecture Competitions as the Victim of American Exceptionalism
Winning Stage 2 design for the WWll Memorial Competition ©Friedrich St. Florian
The guidelines for the administration a design competition are not a closely held state secret. Still, leading up to the announcement of a design competition for the World War II Memorial, some in the military seemed to think otherwise. In early 1993, an AIA staff person, Frimmel Smith, was appointed to serve as a source of information on the subject. Shortly after President Clinton signed a bill in 1993 authorizing the establishment of a memorial, several military officers appeared in Frimmel Smith’s office at the AIA headquarters, announcing they would like to learn about competitions. Were they asleep during the exemplary administration of the Vietnam Memorial competition, which had resulted in an highly acclaimed product? Or, with another war memorial in the offing, did they not want to be caught off guard this time and again be bystanders as was the case when an enlisted man, Jan Scruggs, was the initiator of the Vietnam Memorial?
The initial decision was to turn to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to run a competition. Here, in contrast to the Vietnam Memorial jury, there was undoubtedly a tacit understanding that high-ranking military personnel be part of the decision making process: they did ultimately appear as jurors. The next stage in the decision making process at first appeared to be an invited competition. When the word got out to this effect, there was a general outcry, and the client agreed to an open competition. Here one should note that the GSA had been staging invited competitions for government projects, i.e., courthouses, federal buildings, etc., but with a committee of their peers leading the decision making process. In the case of the WWII Memorial, it was going to be different. Generals and Admirals were going to be looking over the shoulders of the design experts. In marked contrast to the Vietnam Memorial Competition, which generated a huge number of entries, the WWII Memorial competition only ended with 400 entries, with multiple entries coming from one well established architecture firm (Richard Meier). Although the initial design by ultimate winner, Friedrich St. Florian, in the first stage looked somewhat like it may have come out of an Albert Speer playbook, in any case it evolved into the Beaux Arts design we have today. The WWII veterans certainly deserved something more imaginative, and one might still wonder if a rocky approach to the administration of the process contributed to the end result. In its aftermath, two important competitions on the mall, for Dwight Eisenhower and The National Mall Competition were result of participation by invitation only.
Although the WWII Memorial competition ended up being an open event, the circumstances surrounding its implementation suggested that clients were increasingly focusing on exercising more control over the decision-making process.. Today most competitions for large projects are preceded by a call for qualifications, thus eliminating any notion that small emerging firms might be possible winners. In Europe, most competitions are also now preceded by a call for qualifications; but once chosen, the compensation for participation can be very substantial. But there, the numbers of participants is often larger, and compensation numbers are more attractive than one finds on this side of the ocean. Unfortunately, the trend in the U.S. is to suggest that such events are no longer competitions, but more like requests for proposals. We were recently told by a PR firm that they anticipated that a competition would be staged for a new performing arts centre in Sarasota, Florida. Later we learned that “This is not going to be a competition,” though the presentation requirements were substantial. We saw this again in the case of an extension to the architecture/construction building at the University of Florida.
One of the most egregious examples of this phenomenon was the competition staged for the Obama Library/Center in Chicago. In submitting a request to the Obama Foundation for publication of all of the finalists designs, we were told that “this was not a competition.” All this in spite of the fact that the a call for proposals for two sites looked very much like what one might expect of a competition (/competitions-static/2016/08/the-obama-library-competition-what-would-olmsted-have-said/). Because the Obama Foundation did not provide the finalists, with substantial compensation for their efforts, the submission requirements almost found one firm filing for bankruptcy and rumors of another finalist claiming they spent close to $1Million on the project.
Winning entry for the 2022 Cold War Memorial Competition ©Oyler Wu Collaborative
In a country that prizes the open competitive process for ideas in numerous sectors, and has instead supplanted it in the area of architecture and planning with a star architect system; the system resembles something that is antithetical to our notion of democracy. Granted, the trend toward invited competitions throughout the world has also seen the numbers of open competitions reduced to a trickle. But in the case of EU members, the architectural associations have recognized and promoted the notion that open architecture competitions are important, not only to the health of the profession, but the quality of design. Have we heard any objections by the American Institute of Architects concerning the unscrupulous treatment of architects by clients in this country? And that trend is worsening: in 2022 we only were able to find two well administered open competitions for real projects in the U.S. for publication. Last year it was zero. This is not great news for someone in this country interested in pursuing architecture as a profession.
For more information on the evolution of the competition process worldwide:
https://crc.umontreal.ca/en/sdm_downloads/chupin-jean-pierre-g-stanley-collyer-young-architects-in-competitions-when-competitions-and-a-new-generation-of-ideas-elevate-architectural-quality-2/
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San Jose’s Urban Confluence Winner Cancelled
This week we received the news that the winning design for San Jose’s Urban Confluence competition by SMAR Architecture Studio has been cancelled. This comes after the original competition site was abandoned in favor of one more centrally located in downtown San Jose, Plaza de César Chávez. We can only assume that even this wasn’t enough to generate enough interest from major donors. From the very beginning of the competition, it appeared that the enthusiasm of those sponsoring the competition might be lacking links to potential donors with deep pockets—the hi-tech firms in Silicon Valley. After the competition resulted in a design that certainly entailed a major budget, the project had to be in trouble. The competition did produce a remarkable design; but this turned out to be another case where a competition, intended to generate enough public interest to fund a major project, came up short. -Ed
“A Museum for All”
Winning entry by Weiss/Manfredi Landscape Architecture and Urbanism
Background
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s slogan “Creating a Museum for All” certainly reflects the efforts of many art museums to counter the notion that art museums exist primarily to cater to an elitist few. But one should note that this competition for an expansion of the museum’s capacity to serve a wider audience saw an initial step in this direction with the 1999 competition resulting in the Steven Holl addition, a series of pavilions stretching down one side of the large lawn area..
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Preparation and Organization of Design Competitions
[phase 1] Benjamin Hossbach / Christian Lehmhaus / Christine Eichelmann
210 × 230 mm, 192 pp.
over 600 images
softcover
ISBN 978-3-86922-316-2 (English)
ISBN 978-3-86922-240-0 (German)
Dom Publishers
€48 in EU (For price abroad, see below)
Founded in 1998 in Berlin, Phase 1 has been a principal player in the organization and facilitation of design competitions, not only in Germany, but abroad as well. The accomplishments of the firm have been well documented in three volumes—The Architecture of Competitions—beginning in 2i006. Whereas these books mainly focused on the results of the competitions they have administered, the present work, Fundamentals of Competition Management, takes one from the very beginnings of the competition process to its conclusion. The authors envisioned the publication as “three three books in one: one „blue book“ with example projects, one „yellow book“ with statements and the „white book“ with the actual guideline to competition management.”
Although there have been a number of handbooks covering the administration of designcompetitions a study covering the entire process in such detail is a welcome addition to the the literature in this field. As a contribution to this important democratic process that has yielded exceptional design for decades, this volume is not only valid for Europe, but a current overview of the process for those globally who wish to raise the level of design by virtue of a design competition. -Ed
Foreign institutions wishing to obtain a copy of the book will recieve a discount to cover the cost of foreign shipping.
To obtain a copy for that offer, go to: accounting@phase1.de
Since the recent realization of SMAR Architecture’s winning design we have now received images from a professional photo shoot. As an open competition for one of the more important projects in Europe at the time, we feel that full documentation of the process from start to finish was an important page in the history of architecture in the early 21st century. Documentation by us during the 2017 competition, with images from all finalists from the 144 entries is available at:
/competitions-static/2020/11/science-island-design-competition-finalists/
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Completed IMEX by Tuck Hinton Architects. Photo courtesy Anecdote
It is not often that we look back to a competition that occurred three decades ago that was also covered in detail by COMPETITIONS (Vol. 4, #4; pp. 14-27). What made the Chattanooga IMAX different back in 1994 was that the article covering that competition was authored by Prof. Marleen Davis, then Dean of the University of Tennessee’s School of Architecture and a member of the jury panel. This was not just a short article, covering the high points of the competition with a few talking points about the winning design. This 4,000+ word document also described in detail the jury’s observations about all the finalists, including the honorable mentions—one of the few times we have gained such a detailed glimpse in this country from the inside of the competition process.
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Winning entry by Luca Poian Forms Image ©Filippo Bolognese images
Good design seldom happens in a vacuum. And so it was with an international competition for a new mosque in Preston, U.K. A mid-sized city of 95,000, and located in Lancashire near the west coast and almost equally distant from London and Glasgow, Preston has a storied past, going all the way back to the Romans and the late Middle Ages, where it was the site of significant battles. During the Industrial Revolution, the city prospered, and it was not until after World War II that Preston experienced the British version of the U.S. Rust Belt. In the meantime, the city has experienced an upswing in economic activity, with an unemployment rate of only 3%. Aside from the appearance of new industries, the city has benefitted from the establishment of Central Lancashire University (CLU), which employs over 3,000 faculty and staff, and, as such, is one of the regions major employers. Any new university requires new facilities, and one of the most outstanding examples of this at CLU was the new Student Centre and Plaza, a result of a 2016 RIBA-sponsored competition won by Hawkins/Brown
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Changdong Station winner – image ©D & B Partners Architects
Whereas international competitions for real projects have become a rarity lately, Korea is a welcome exception. Among the plethora of competition announcements we receive almost weekly, several have ended with foreign firms as winners. But the history of welcoming international participants does go back several years. One notable early example was the Incheon Airport competition, won by Fentress Bradburn Architects (1962-70).
Among the more recent successes of foreign firms was the Busan Opera House competition, won by Snøhetta (2013-) and the Sejong Museum Gardens competition, won by Office OU, Toronto (2016-2023).
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1st Place: Zaha Hadid Architects – night view from river – Render by Negativ
Arriving to board a ferry boat or cruise ship used to be a rather mundane experience. If you had luggage, you might be able to drop it off upon boarding, assuming that the boarding operation was sophisticated enough. In any case, the arrival experience was nothing to look forward to. I recall boarding the SS United States for a trip to Europe in the late 1950s. Arriving at the pier in New York, the only thought any traveler had was to board that ocean liner as soon as possible, find one’s cabin, and start exploring. If you were in New York City and arriving early, a nearby restaurant or cafe would be your best bet while passing time before boarding.
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