A few years ago, just outside of Boston, the city of Newton (where PSMJ’s headquarters is) was considering an ordinance requiring the city’s Designer Selection Committee and Board of Alderman to hold a design competition for any construction project exceeding $90 million.
During a Public Facilities Committee meeting, it was argued that competitions lead to better buildings because there is a tight focus on the project, and that competitions are great idea-generators. The resolution didn’t pass, but the months-long city discussions showed that, in recent years, competitions have become a more accepted method to choosing a firm for not only major projects, but smaller work as well.
According to Stanley Collyer, Jr., Ph.D., author of Competing Globally in Architecture Competitions: Meeting New Design Challenges in the Information Age, competitions can give a design firm a major boost. Besides winning a commission for a project, participation in a design competition can result in other benefits for a firm, as listed by Collyer:
• One of the best reasons to enter an open competition is to explore new building types and thereby validate the firm’s expertise in a new area.
• Even if the participating firm does not win the competition, any special recognition it may receive should help it to substantiate its experience in that genre. Firms that have been recipients of an honorable mention in competitions have benefitted from such recognition.
• Some firms participate in an occasional competition to lift morale in the office. Competitions can get the creative juices flowing—something which is often absent from some of the more mundane daily projects that may be on the boards.
• Many firms would like to get invited to participate in limited competitions. How does a firm get invited? One way is to do well in an open competition.
When to Avoid Competitions
There are definitely situations where you should avoid entering a competition. Keep an eye out for the following conditions, as provided by the American Institute of Architects’ Handbook of Architectural Design Competitions:
• Projects the client wants built on a very short schedule are poor candidates for competitions, since there may not be adequate time to plan, organize, manage, and judge a competition under these circumstances.
• Projects for which a sponsor is unwilling to establish a qualified jury should not
be undertaken as competitions.
• Projects for which an adequate development budget is not available will not be successful. The additional expense of holding a competition is a modest one relative to total project costs, but adequate initial funding is essential.
• Avoid projects where a sponsor hopes that a design chosen in competition will either help raise funds or generate enough interest to make construction possible. Design competitions should not be used as fund raising events.
• Projects lacking adequate professional advice result in poorly run competitions that benefit neither sponsor nor competitors.
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