ARCHITECTURAL COMPETITION: A STRESSFUL GAME
In the field of construction today, nothing can create more novel opportunities or destroy the hopes and efforts of its agents like ar- chitectural competitions. These competitions resemble a pretentious collective “game”, an intense competitive teamwork with only one “winner”: a seductive and luxurious challenge promising the winner new financial resources and a unique chance for a new design and providing his investor, through creation of a competitive atmosphere, with a good design for an optimal price. All moments of this “game” is full of excitement and tension for both sides. In the process, it is natural that the players do whatever they can to achieve final victory, although all of them are well aware that in the end, there is only one winner and the rest will suffer financial loss, a waste of effort and creativity and probably extreme disappointment. The organizers of the game, however, are in no bet- ter position. Few organizers are devoid of presumptions with regards to the game, to the unknown players or the abstract and probably unrealizable outcome; the result of such a mentality is a fear of a “final circle” or “acceptance of the results” of the competition. Today, it might appear that since the number of national and international competitions has increased in the global village, it has become easier to participate in such competitions. Yet, the openness has also opened the way to the more professional players coming from beyond traditional frontiers. These are experienced players whose presence in the Premier League and international competi- tions overshadows the activities of others. Therefore, it is only natu- ral that although a confrontation in many such competitions provides young and inexperienced mini-soccer players with a unique chance, such confrontation can be reduced to the three components of “use- less costs”, “waste of emotions and creativity” and “nervous break- down”. However, who has not heard the legends of success of the yesterday’s “mini-soccer players” who are the “stars” of today? Not only the players and their experience have gone through substantial changes, but the “essence” of the game has also evolved fundamen- tally with regards to its relations and functions in the past decades. It is not uncommon for new “competitions” to express through the tens of pages of their instruction manuals, expectations going beyond the traditional knowledge and responsibility of the preceding competi- tors and only satisfied through a demonstration of a huge amount of subsidiary “leg work”. However, it is more than a century that these “competitions” have established and preserved their status in the international architectural scene turning it, on the one hand, into a unique tool for their players to present the “purest” of all arts and “the most novel” creativities, and on the other hand, into the most “ef- ficient” way for their organizers to achieve such “superlatives”. However, these “superlatives” cannot be achieved without a proper performance of the “jury”. This is why today the desired final result is more than ever dependent upon the jury’s capability and experience. An awareness of the complexity of the projects, a famili- arity with the numerous demands of the investors as well as the local regulations and finally, defining and applying correct criteria consti- tute only a part of the required qualities of the jury. Such duties can prove less problematic than detecting and filtering faulty players who do not find artistic plagiarism in contradiction with their profession. In this issue, we have tried to give an image of this seductive game as well as the corresponding tensions and the mentality of its players.
THE JURORS OF MEMAR AWARD 2014