Competitions: Risk and Rivalry

The selection of the architect for most projects is akin to a closed-door, shades-drawn, back-room poker game, with the players limited to the politically, professionally and socially well-connected.

But in the last few years, both invited and open design competitions increasingly have become fashionable, especially for public and high-profile projects, putting the architecture profession into a sharper light. In effect, competitions are the wild card in architecture today, changing some of the rules of the game, stirring risk and rivalry, and chance and controversy.

Few weeks go by without the announcement of a design competition across the country and abroad, be it for an affordable-housing project in Colton, Calif.; a war memorial on Long Island, N.Y.; a vision of a futuristic Milwaukee; a park in Paris and an array of facilities for a host of schools.

Under way at present in the Los Angeles area are at least a half a dozen competitions in various forms and stages. These include the Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown, a symbolic gateway to the city bridging the Hollywood Freeway and a cultural arts park in the San Fernando Valley. Just concluded was one for the urban design of Olympic Boulevard in West Los Angeles, and in the Beverly Hills Civic Center, the result of another is nearing the completion of construction.

Whatever their respective merits, the differing designs of the four finalists in the limited, by-invitation-only competition for Disney Hall, scheduled to be unveiled soon, is sure to generate debate. Because only one of the four will be chosen, either Gottfried Boehm of West Germany, Hans Hollein of Austria, James Stirling of England or local Frank Gehry, three will be exposed as having been rejected, a position no one likes to be in, especially in the competitive, ego-involved world of design.

Gehry, along with Thomas Beeby of Chicago and Mario Botta of Switzerland, recently had been selected as finalists in a competition to design a new building for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. But the museum subsequently canceled the competition that would have involved developing a design concept, and instead, on the basis of interviews, selected Botta. “By not having the finalists produce a design, we saved time and money and probably avoided embarrassment,” said a museum official.

The museum’s decision raised anew the debate over competitions. These include complaints by architects of convoluted selection processes, predisposed juries and rising costs to produce appropriate submissions.

“Architectural competitions have become a combination marathon and steeplechase,” commented New York-based architect Lance Brown, who has served as a professional adviser to competitions.

Yet an increasing number of architects are responding to competitions, spurred on by peer pressure, a chance to display their talent, the need for work and the hope, however faint, for recognition. “They are irresistible, especially if you are young and hungry, or old and competitive, or a combination of the above,” Brown added.

Still, for all their warts, competitions are a healthy exercise, especially for major public projects that, in the past, tended to be controlled by political and professional old-boy networks. But because there are no official rules governing competitions--the American Institute of Architects tends to disdain them--some can get out of hand.

Among the problems have been competitors exceeding requested materials and producing drawings to dazzle juries, juries ignoring programs to peruse their own prejudices or jury members paying debts or scoring points with friends and associates by pressing for their selection, regardless of merit or qualifications. There have been rumors of the latter in the San Fernando Valley competition.

And when the finalists in the West Coast Gateway competitions were recently announced there were complaints from a few participants that the guidelines had been confused. Disorganized was one of the kinder words used by competitors Joe Nicholson and Mark Mills of San Diego in suggesting they be reimbursed for their effort.

“Sometimes the role of a competition is to test out a program that just might not be feasible, at least as presented to the competitors,” said one of the jurors in the gateway competition. “I think that is the case in this competition. The question is whether the city wants to continue with what certainly will be an empty and embarrassing exercise, or face up to the reality and begin again.”

Architectural competitions are not new. One of the first recorded was for a war memorial on the Acropolis sponsored by the Council of Athens in 448 B.C. Other world landmarks conceived in competitions include London’s Parliament House, Berlin’s Reichstag and Paris’ Eiffel Tower. In the United States, it was competitions that generated the designs for the White House, the Washington Monument, the Vietnam Memorial and New York’s Central Park.

While Europe has maintained a tradition of competitions as the prime vehicle for selecting architects for public projects, the concept in the United States has waxed and waned. Prompting the most recent resurgence have been generous grants, guidelines and encouragement from the federal National Endowment for the Arts, initiated by Michael John Pittas when he was director of its design program in the early 1980s.

Generally, competitions are viewed by sponsors, be they private developers or public officials, as an excellent vehicle to generate varied solutions to a particular design problem, as well as publicity, public education and support, and, in some cases, financing.

“Frankly they are a marvelous if costly and time-consuming way to launch a project,” said Marc Winogrond of the city of West Hollywood, which sponsored an open international design competition for its proposed civic center. “We received nearly 300 entries, the result of which was that we got 300 architects to test out our program instead of one. I’m just glad the jury picked a concept that I think is good and will work.”

Said one of the losers: “Competitions give us a chance to show our stuff, and in this respect it is fun. We realize, of course, we are being taken advantage of, but it is our decision, isn’t it? And there is always the chance we might win, especially if you have a friend on the jury.”

For a critic, competitions also can be fun and instructive, for they offer a snapshot of sorts of current design prejudices. But obviously it is time for some standards, or architects, like turkeys at Thanksgiving, are just going to be increasingly feasted upon by both public and private clients.