Architectural Competitions as a Challenge for the Architectors - Essay Example

architectural competition Down the years, architectural competitions often appeared to be making history when one considers the outcome of many of these events – a breakthrough here, an obstacle there and new styles and solutions everywhere! Interestingly enough, competitions are public events that determine the relationship between a patron and a designer, which in the normal course would have been an entirely private affair. Alternatively praised as a democratic forum for talent search and public choice or condemned as a lottery whose outcome is inevitably a compromise,i competitions have fascinated even their distracters precisely because of these very potentialities. As Bergdoll put it, their own history, chequered as it is with scandal, intrigue and injustice, is a major factor in their survival.ii 1.1. History Many competitions have acquired mythic status as benchmark dates in the history of architecture. Vasari was perhaps the first to announce a competition in 1401 for the second set of bronze doors to the Florence Baptistery (fig. 2), on the eve of the Renaissance itself. This event marked the revival not only of antique forms, but also of the antique love of individual and civic kudos. In this event, young architects Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi, made their mark even as others watched in excitement. It also opened the way for a novel approach to pictorial space and narration, which historians have since judged fundamental to Renaissance style.iii These two artists competed again in 1418 to solve the problem of spanning the cathedrals crossing (fig 2) and that competition resulted in a dome whose beauty and technical ingenuity continue to awe visitors and connoisseurs to this day. These two events established the claims of competitions as a means of discovering youthful talent whose proposals are destined to effect major stylistic developments and exert far-reaching influence. If the events of 1401 and 1418 are reckoned as the early attempts in a long series of other competitions that followed during the renaissance period, the competition for the Place Louis XV (todays Place de la Concorde, fig. 3), in 1748 is often seen as initiating modern approaches to town planning. Accounts of the rise of the Gothic revival in public architecture are bracketed by the two great London competitions: the Houses of Parliament (1832) and the Royal Law Courts (1867).iv The challenge in studying the history of architecture competitions lies not simply in recounting their historical role in the evolution of style, and the role that historiographical perceptions have played in perpetuating the practice, but in ascertaining as to why the procedure has come into prominence at particular stages of the evolution of this profession. The competition process has evolved parallel to its very precondition of the architect as an artist, that is, one that primarily provides designs rather than supervises construction. The competition procedure presupposes the possibility of working out projects abstractly and separately from the building process, communicating them to patron and builder by scale models or graphic representations that can be discussed, revised, compared, and ultimately put into competition with any number of other proposals.v 1.1.1. The Greeks It was the Greeks who first proposed honouring the designers of monuments and buildings, just as it was their practice with athletes, sculptors, artists and poets. But unlike athletes, poets, or artists, architects and to an extent sculptors - such distinctions were fluid until well into the sixteenth century - were obliged to enter contests with mere representations of their intended work rather than the work itself. Such representations were largely useless to the unsuccessful competitors; but they demanded specific training to assess, as well as a series of often costly further commitments to execute. Thus, architecture competitions were reserved only for extraordinary circumstances (unlike say the poetic competitions, which were a regular feature of the Greek society then) in which the awarding of laurels might enhance the prestige of a public undertaking of great expense and symbolic importance. The idea of a competition as a democratic procedure for selecting a design confronted the opposing reality of the specific competencies needed to judge architectural representations, from the very first competition. The competition held in 448 B.C. for a war memorial on the Acropolis was submitted to popular vote; but the governing body had specifically established the minimum scale for the drawings submitted, suggesting a desire to equalize the presentations to some extent and give an equal footing to all contestants.vi 1.1.2. Middle ages In the middle ages, soliciting competitive entires for difficult design problems was far more frequent than is generally recognised. Rivalry between cathedral towns and teams of masons promoted increasingly daring technical and stylistic solutions. Problems frequently arose as one generation inherited the incomplete work of another and was obliged to turn for advice outside the local workshop.vii In fact, the celebrated competitions of 1401 and 1418 at the Florence Cathedral are the forerunners to the historic development of sequential consultations and limited competitions for the various parts of a building that had been designed and refined as it was constructed over the years, in this case the nave and the piers of the crossing. According to Vasari, it was Brunelleschi who suggested a two-stage contest, a procedure not common before the eighteenth century, for a solution to spanning the crossing, there by fundamentally transforming what had till then been a consultative practice into a public competition, as well as reviving the antique ideal of agon. The Renaissance competitions became an opportunity for asserting an individuals genius on the one hand and of the community as well. They extended the realm of competitions to outside of workshops and involved the intellectual and political elite of the commune, in a public discourse of artistic merits. The winning architect emerged as an individual distinct from those members of the building trades who would subsequently implement his project. His practice of disegno increasingly sustained his pretensions to share the intellectual world of other artists, and indeed of his patrons.viii 1.1.3. Renaissance and baroque In the Italian and French academies, architectural competitions developed in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the artistic academies of the late Renaissance and baroque Europe, the practice and theory of architecture was advanced as a humanist pursuit through the formulation, discussion, and judgment of projects. Academies evolved over the course of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries from being small groups of artists, architects and occasionally their patrons who were stressing the intellectual status of their profession, to powerful agents of state aesthetic policy and to international schools of art and architecture. By the eighteenth century, scores of academies flourished in the small towns and cities despite a tremendous diversity of statute, and they sustained a remarkably consistent approach to the theory and practice of architecture.ix In the process, the competition process itself was to emerge as one of the most effective instruments in shaping, protecting, and perpetuating the concept of artist-architect being distinct from the building trades and market.x Competitions in the renaissance academies of design were different from the antique contests on which they were consciously modelled. The early ideas of imitating past masters quickly transformed these design competitions into more than a path to honour their masters. They gradually provided a platform to the practice of architecture, distinct from the age-old tradition of working ones way up through the building trades, although initially architects combined instruction in the academy with practical training under an architect. Academic competitions represented a purely theoretical discourse on architecture divorced from the building site or the actual commission, and laid the basis for a system of education at the drafting board that became increasingly more sophisticated as a simulation of the act of architectural design. This development reached its zenith in France, where the Academie darchitecture served equally as an advisory board on royal projects and a privileged entry into the highest ranks of state practice. The Roman Accademia di San Luca, founded in 1577, was a typical international academy receiving foreigners, Frenchmen in particular, to its studios and competitions.xi In the early years of the eighteenth century, Pope Clement XI sponsored the Concorsi Clementini, which was later to become regular events of aura and prestige. With their competitions open to eager foreigners seeking recognition and medals as part of the requisite training to assimilate the artistic culture of Rome, Italian academies had become, by the early eighteenth century, centres for international exchange. They were also the major forums of competition that created the master pieces as the facade of San Giovanni in Laterano, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps. Grand tours of the antique remains or the baroque master pieces provided opportunities for interaction among the architectural fraternity of students and patrons. Consonance with tradition and continuation is part of academic training in architecture. This did not discourage innovation or creative talent. In line with this, academic design projects encouraged a student to abstract assigned problems to the most general level, to concentrate on typological essence, and to generate solutions from geometric and compositional study. The earliest surviving competition drawings at the Accademia di San Luca date from 1677, the year in which a formal collaborative agreement was drawn up with the French academy at Rome. Written records confirm, however, that a full educational system in which competitions played an integral part had been developed in the late sixteenth century, and that French artists in Rome had long taken advantage of the Academies, lectures, collections, and studios, even competing in the occasional competitions. Competition regulations drawn up in 1675 merely codified a century-old procedure. They provided for three classes of difficulty, with the first two calling for original composition on a set programme and the third meant for beginners, requiring a rendering of a Roman building esteemed to embody the highest architectural principles. For example, in 1677 the beginner class was assigned a rendering of the facade of Michelangelos Palazzo dei Conservatori, the site of the annual award ceremony, while the higher classes were given original compositions, in both cases for a monumental church. Significantly this competition was underwritten by the French Minister Colbert to celebrate the new collaboration, formalising the important role that the Accademia di San Luca had long played in the lives of French artists and architects in Rome. It was a collaboration that would continue for the next century to act as a spur in the development of French academic competitions into what ultimately became the basis for the international Beaux-Arts system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.xii Often organised in two stages - from the sketch, a, to the fully developed rendu – competitions played a fundamental part in the education of architects. As an important means of guaranteeing competence in the liberal art of architecture, competitions perpetuated the ideal of the artist-architect and idealised the very act of design, codifying and teaching the intellectual conception of architectural composition as an artistic act of reason.xiii 1.1.4. Industrial revolution First the French Revolution and later the Industrial Revolution brought about major shifts in architectural competition procedures. Architectural competition followed democratic processes and market economy signals. At the same time, architectural competitions are now being celebrated for the attention they paid to the broader public needs. A new attention to utilitarian programmes as legitimate concerns for architecture became important. At the same time, the inherent contradictions of competitions as a regular public procedure under sponsors on the open market on one side and the compulsion to be creative with the assignments on the other were vexing the fraternity during the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century, England did not have any central authority or academy for architectural matters. Competitions were widely used irrespective of a project size. Competitive system was accepted as merely a sound business practice, and competitions were legitimatised by putting faith in the advantages natural to any competitions per se and the gains to society and progress which they secured. Competitions became frequent affairs from the 1840s onward with at least one per week at that time and which had doubled by the end of the century, in the wake of Victorian liberalism. The competition for the Houses of Parliament was held after the great fire of London in 1834 and quickly earned notoriety for the roles played by the national press and public opinion that led to reliance on the judgement of laymen for this major project. The competition, with the alternatives of Gothic or Elizabethan styles as choices for representing the English institutions, generated intense debate as well as unsavoury publicity for the roles played by the professionals in the marketplace of facile fashionxiv which lasted till the end of the century. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) was shaken by the intensity of the complaints about the way competitions were run. The dignity and autonomy that they hoped to maintain for the profession was at stake. To arrest this unedifying trend, RIBA appointed committees to make recommendations for reforming the system. Problems such as lack of clarity in the brief, “…misleading perspective views, false estimates, and other common gimmicks,” were reported according to Bergdoll, as well as “inexperienced jurors” who “…were often led to select a design without suspecting in the slightest degree that they may have been captivated by the meretricious allurements of the artist.” xv By 1872 an RIBA committee had drawn up regulations requiring qualified assessors, a reasonable prize fund and a commitment to the winner on behalf of the promoter. The remarkable thing about these recommendations was the degree to which they reconstituted the fundamental conditions and methods of academic competition in an open public competition. The English regulations, which coincided with parallel efforts in French, German, Austrian and American professional associations, outlined the principal features of the modern competition of the twentieth century: an open, anonymous competition based on a programme or brief which relates to a specific site and purpose, and which lists the jury members as well as the prize funds and the deadline for submission. Read More