Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to analytically review and discuss architectural
competitions, mainly through the general views of a few selected working
landscape architects, architects and scientists. I have studied the moral and workethical
aspects of using graphical presentations as a mean to draw attention,
rather than trying to meet the set program points.
My results are derived from e-mail interviews, literature studies and studies of
the competition entry Stockholmssfären from the competition Stockholmsporten
which was held in Sweden early 2011.
The literature studies have shown that the available literature on architectural
competitions and research on the subject is biased towards architecture rather
than landscape architecture. Worth mentioning is also that there is not a lot of
available literature, mainly due to lacking research on the subject.
The informants for the interviews were selected based upon their academic
merits and/or experience of working with or doing scientific research on
architectural competitions. The landscape architects’ opinions regarding
architectural competitions turned out to be in many ways alike – they seemed to
have a pretty relaxed view of competing in architecture. The architectural
researcher and the delegate from Sveriges Arkitekter showed some different
ideas and made a clear case of the importance of following the program.
It seems that architectural competitions are rather different depending on
which side of the competition entry you are. Competing architects have their
view of how their work should be done – Sveriges Arkitekter’s delegate and the
world of science have another.
My conclusion after finishing this essay is that you must not lose what is
essential to landscape architecture – the user benefit and the creation of
architecture suitable for its context. For those reasons I would like to see more
research of the subject being done. This would give a clearer picture of what the
situation is today and how we could work in the future to avoid architectural
competitions being nothing more than a showcase for spectacular presentations
and implausible plans.