Archiprint 3 - Because it is always a competition!

Archiprint September 2012 \\ Volume 02 \ Issue 01

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welcome expats

illustratie: Niels Bakkerus

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Editorial Colophon Archiprint September 2012 / volume 02 issue 01 free publication / Eindhoven ISSN: 2213-5588 Journal for Architecture, created by students of the Department of the Built Environment of the Eindhoven University of Technology and architectural study association AnArchi. anarchi@bwk.tue.nl, www.anarchi.eu

Editor-in-chief Erik Hoogendam Final Editor Laurence Bolhaar Design Aris Santarmos Editors Iris Jansen, Antony Laurijsen, Emma Lubbers, Marjan Mohammadzadeh Sarab, Ferhat Topuz

Although nowadays many changes characterise the dynamics and definition of the architectural profession, some elements seem to be of all times. One of these elements is the competition in architecture; a rather strange phenomenon that has been part of the architects line of work throughout the ages and withstood all different kinds of periods and styles.

The list of reasons why a student should participate in design competitions seems to be endless. Of course the winner gets a lot of attention, but aside from that all participants will have the opportunity to work on their skills. Whether it may be improving the design process, discovering new architectural concepts, or simply developing visualisation skills: competitions offer many ways of improving yourself.

However, the question is whether or not competitions contribute to a sophisticated view on architecture as well. Nowadays, a lot of large, interesting projects seem to

be organised as a competition, but is this the right way to gather the best designs?

Of course, the client has the opportunity to pick the design of his choice from a huge pile of contributions. Especially now, during the economical meltdown amongst architectural offices. Some offices have to participate, otherwise they might end up out of work. On the other hand, these offices may design their contributions strategically: what will stand out from the designs of other contestants?

This issue will discuss the topic of competition in architecture. First, its field and history are explored through a variety of approaches of offices and writers. The second part of this issue will be a showcase of what student contestants were able to contribute to past competitions, and to the debate that is called architecture.

Laurence Bolhaar, Erik Hoogendam

Guest Editors Teodora Adriana Cirjan, Bert Dirrix, Tim van der Grinten, Steven van der Heijden, Kristel Hermans, Bob l’Herminez, Ryanne Janssen, Xaviera Burón Klose, Jan Knikker, Daan Koch, Hayato Mizutani, Filips Pitens, Ruurd Roorda, Piotr Michał Szcześniak, Rob Thijsen, Laertis Antonios Vassiliou, Gerard van Zeijl Advisory Committee Bernard Colenbrander, Jacob Voorthuis, Maarten Willems Printing Drukkerij Van Druenen, Geldrop www.vandruenen.nl

Address AnArchi study association Eindhoven University of Technology Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning Vertigo Building Den Dolech 2 5612 AZ Eindhoven The Netherlands

facebook.com/pages/AnArchi issuu.com/anarchi

This magazine cannot be republished or reproduced without the permission of the publisher.

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Contents MVRDV

Jan Knikker

.06

Gerard van Zeijl

.10

Interview with Steven van der Heijden

.12

Emma Lubbers

.14

Daan Koch

.16

Interview with Rob Thijsen and Bert Dirrix

.18

Xaviera Burón Klose,

.22

Keep Calm and Carry on

Race Without a Finish Line

A Brief History in Architectural Competitions

Architectenbureau Koen van Velsen

Competing to Improve the Built Environment

Powerhouse Company Small Office, Big Competitions

Two Offices, Two Competitions

The Story About how I Woke up Underneath my Desk

Trudo

Woensel West Competition

Trek-in: Wood Challenge

Tim van der Grinten, Kristel Hermans

Olympics: Educational Competition

Teodora Adriana Cirjan,

.25

Filips Pitens, Hayato Mizutani

Be Ahead of Competition Confessions of an Architectural Competition Addict Competitions: Ultimate Architectural Freedom AnArchi

Piotr Michał Szcześniak

.27

Laertis Antonios Vassiliou

.29

Ruurd Roorda

.31

Bob l’Herminez

.33

Agenda

.33

Competitions

.34

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MVRDV Keep Calm and Carry on What is the role of competition in contemporary architecture?

In what way does it contribute to the development of the architect’s profession, and how is it involved in the current change of the architect’s field of work? To gain some perspective on these issues, we approached Jan Knikker to share his opinion, through both his position at MVRDV, and his personal approach as an architectural journalist.

Text by Jan Knikker If someone would ask you to work three months for free and then be selected of a competing pool of 30 individuals to continue this same work for a salary, would you do it? If you say yes you must be an architect. No other professional discipline I can think of has accepted such harsh competition as a normal way to do business.

As a starting journalist I was already puzzled by the idea that the unrealised portfolio of many architects is considered by themselves and the critics their best work. Today, after working 13 years for architects, I understand the complexity of the many economical, political and social arguments which burden decision making by architecture juries, but the system of voluntarily testing your ideas in a competition still surprises me.

Recently we were invited to a competition for an urban transformation competition

of a rundown area in a German city, home to the largest concentration of millionaires in Germany. The conditions were typical for the way architects have to survive these days: 30 competing offices, only the first 3 would win an award of not more than 15.000 Euro. We discussed the deliverables and calculated that the project would cost us an excess of 100.000 Euro. In the best case we would lose 85.000 Euro on this project, the rich German city basically invited us to give them a present with the value of a new BMW 650i. I called the organisers asking why on earth they would make the competition so cruel and the very friendly lady explained to me that the Association of German Architects BDA made these rules to give young offices a chance. A chance of 30:1 to lose 85.000 Euro, would you take on that gamble in your private life? Perhaps in a casino, to place a bet on your home?

This example shows how little architects have established a lobby for themselves.

Apparently there is a 2500 year tradition of organising architectural competitions with early starchitects Ictinus and Callicrates as winners of the Parthenon temple competition. Competing against each other is therefore an ancient tradition and generally seen as a source of innovation.

“A competition, is an extremely important stimulator of serious thinking and brings out the best ideas. The more complex the problem, the less likely it is that the framers have even considered the ten best solutions” says Terence Riley, who as chief architecture and design curator

at the Museum of Modern Art oversaw the competition to redesign MoMA.” (Metropolis Magazine 11-2002) The German example however, also shows how the burden of the competition is often laid upon the countless unemployed architecture interns which are easily hired on a ‘no cure no pay’ base in Germany. The BDA’s wish to create chances for the youth, has turned into a system of youth exploitation. Why do architects not organise themselves better one wonders. Not only the voluntary competition system exists, global economy is taking the architecture profession in a continuous rollercoaster ride from bubble economy to economical crisis. During the boom everybody is happy and busy, during the downturn everybody tries to survive, deadlines are in the way of organising yourself better. Rem Koolhaas is an outspoken critic of the international competition system and expresses in his latest book a slight envy towards the collaboration of the Japanese Metabolism movement in the sixties: “I miss that cohesiveness,” he says. “Now there is zero communication among architects. We’re all doing our own thing; none of it is even remotely connected to the traditions of our own countries. There’s nothing Dutch about my architecture. We are constantly competing against each other, and winning a competition can make the difference between five years of work and … nothing.

It’s difficult to remain lucid and friendly.”

(New York Magazine Oct 23, 2001).

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Competitions are tricky, they can be executed and then suddenly stop as was the case with the European Patent Office (EPO).

Eight years later we received the official letter that the competition was stopped and would be organised again - this time as a Public Private Partnership. We tried to enter but the references would not allow us in, the competition rules demanded three completed office buildings of more than 30.000 m2. Not even in partnership with a highly experienced construction company they would allow us in. It drives architects crazy not being admitted as the educational system is still preparing architects as generalists to design everything in-between a garden shed and a sky scraper.

In competitions not only technical insight and logical thinking are demanded, the demand for originality and creativity are remarkable. Recycling is not acceptable and some highly successful architects who resort to creating market friendly recognisable architecture are heavily criticised by their peers. The competition systems constant demand of new ideas can lead to irrational decision making in the competition teams. “Oh no, this is a great solution but looks too much like...� etc. I have witnessed in a few offices that competition teams have in all innocence come up with exactly the same solution as other architects before them.

The general reaction once the similarities are discovered is shock and a shameful

exchange of emails with the office which had the idea earlier, in my short career I have received many apologetic emails from architects in distress that their creativity has lead to them being identified as copycat and I had to send out a few myself.

How come that two architecture teams in different countries working on separate schemes come up with exactly the same idea and that the first in this ideas lottery is the winner whilst the second is subject to nasty suspicion on various especially to this copy-paste issue dedicated websites?

Mostly because the same problem presented to the same sociological group of people might result in exactly the same solution, >

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often the best of at least ten or more options that the team has explored and rejected. The Why Factory at Delft University of Technology is currently researching the roots of the copy paste and wonders whether ‘copyright’ should not just be declared ‘right to develop’. Other designs would be a

viable base for further innovation.

So the competition system is economically ridiculous, exploits the youth, leads to same ideas… Anyhting else? The EPO example shows how the system is also more and more abused for risk management.

In the Netherlands in the 1990’s and currently in Denmark the will to take

risk by commissioning young architects important buildings has lead to architecture becoming an export good. The sheer will to experiment and take financial risks with inexperienced architects full of fresh ideas was and is a great success, which has led to new generations of architects and with it a series of remarkably innovative buildings

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which have changed the way we work, live or study. Today many of these ambitious offices with wide portfolios, would not be esteemed suitable to design a suburban school due to a lack of having produced already five schools in the last five years.

This leads to excess such as having one architecture office involved in all major

train station renovations in the Netherlands.

Specialism is a great virtue and the stations will turn out great, yet somehow the balance between specialism and diversity is under pressure. If we have a competition system why can Hans van der Meer make a series of identical pictures of Dutch towns titled “Netherlands – off the shelf ”? Did we not seek to stimulate serious thinking and bringing out the best ideas as Terence Riley stated? What ever happened to this ideal?

spirit. Winning is a great moment of confirmation of one’s vision, and it secures jobs for the office. The right competition is organised in a way that the office is paid a fair amount to have some time to thoroughly explore the task, experiment on a few options and develop the best for the specific context as described in the brief. Time is money also counts for competitions; the more money invested, the better the competition’s result can become.

When the city of Seattle, free of any nostalgia, looked for an architect to construct yet the third library of the future on the same plot in downtown they came up with a process reflecting the civic pride of the project. After an open administrative tender procedure, with an expert jury selecting a few architects, the public was engaged in a series of public hearings. The selected architects had to present their thinking about architecture in general and more specifically their views on the modern library to the people of Seattle, at that stage no design was allowed yet. The winner was awarded the process of designing the new library. So not a ready design was chosen but OMA as the winning architect entered a process with the client. It seems logical. If you would hire an architect to design your house, would you not prefer to sit at a table and discuss the design with the architect as opposed to choose a design of ten readymade options?

Very welcome are intermediate presentations to the clients, which make sure that the chosen direction is not getting too deep into the clients tolerance outback. The chance to collaborate with the client and develop the design according to perhaps slightly changing views is of immense added value. The competition for the Roskilde Rock Museum ROCKmagneten was a competition conducted in this way and lead to a project which was embraced by the client enthusiastically as they got a chance to become owner of a part of the design process.

MVRDV entered a number of competitions in the last years, we won some and lost some. Loosing leads to an evaluation with an educational character and a fast forward

What is the solution to this competition madness? Keep calm and carry on and whilst doing so demand your local representation, whether called BNA, DBA, or RIBA, to lobby for better conditions.

Figures [1] Jardin de Descartes (University, Marne-la-Vallée, France, image copyright credit MVRDV) [2] ROCKmagneten (Danish Rock Museum, Roskilde, Denmark, image copyright credit MVRDV and COBE by Luxigon) About the author Jan Knikker is Head of Public Relations and Business Development at MVRDV.

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Race Without a Finish Line A Brief History in Architectural Competitions Text by Gerard van Zeijl Postmodernism as a critique of functionalism The grounds of postmodernism were not founded on giving answers, but on asking correct and well-directed questions, as a manifest of critique on defining design as an instrument of emancipation, in the way it was raised by functionalists as a social utopian correction to the class-society of the nineteenth century. Around the Mayrevolt of 1968, Manfredo Tafuri criminates bureaucratic and capitalistic motives to have impoverished the functionalism into an empty and rigid building practice.

Initial moral ambition became a race, a competition; a design by the lowest price, were the architect parts from his position of avant-gardist and degradingly leases himself to a project developer.

At the expense of architecture being an autonomous discipline, the building practice dictated normativity by demand and supply. Here, in 1978, Carel Weeber stated architecture to be ‘economised, socialised, psychologised, ecologised; in short: buried’.

Architecture was to be liberated from the constriction of mono-functionality, as from the claws of the multi-disciplinal design.

Here, postmodern design did not generate straight-forward answers, but critically and judiciary questioned the (apparent) certainties of the single-dimensional functionalism. No longer, the paradigms of modern architecture were indiscriminately imitated; history was to be thoroughly examined in her countless mutations and

alterations, to trace the derailment itself, as well as to profoundly question the hermetic and a-historic design method of analysis and synthesis of the schedule of requirements.

Centuries of ‘anthropocentrism’, which degenerated the perspective that human beings are the central, were disproved; after all, architecture could never merely depend on its user and consumer! False myths, conform the pursuit of profit, were to be despised. In ‘Mythologies’ from 1957, Roland Barthes states the true myth.

Through architect Ungers’ plea ‘keine Funktion, sondern Fiktion’, architecture became functionally as well as narratively, by converting ‘problem solving’ to ‘Thematisierung’. Architecture was conceived to be a cultural notion.

Ungers’ apprentice, Aldo Rossi, accused functionalism of being ‘naïve’.

Mart Stam once defended efficiency with ‘the door is two meters high, and we know why’, however this was considered factitive short-term thinking, reflecting mere one day of the ‘consumer’ and the briefness of the building process. This is why Rossi, in his 1965 ‘The architecture of the city’, adverts to a long-term perspective; the ‘permanence’, where history beholds the development of the city as ‘a social work of art ’. The city, no longer a whipped-clean project area by concept of ‘tabula rasa’, but an eternal reprocessing of the palimpsest as a reciprocal commentary between the urban tissue and the architectural design. Secchi called this approach: ‘working on a running engine’, where Frampton named it ‘Critical

Regionalism’; a systematic provocation between the character of local-traditional and modern-international architecture.

Whilst Rossi, through ‘typology and morphology’ postulated the ‘permanence’ of the residential and public buildings, Robert Venturi - in his 1965 ‘Manifest’refers to ‘complexity and contradiction’.

Where Rossi spoke about ‘proletarian architecture’ or ‘frivol triviality’, Venturi points at Pop Art to indicate the tension between the architect and the common people architecture; ‘the heroic and ugly architecture’, which the spokesman of postmodernism, Charles Jencks, articulated as ‘double coded architecture’.

Earlier on, about 1959, Aldo van Eyck -as a member of Team X- plead for ‘ambiguity’ in a way of a ‘configurative’ design process, that had to prevent the degradation of modern architecture, by reconciling the essentials of history, while in the meantime, James Stirling, competed several historical examples with ‘high technology’; architecture became ‘the art of perspective’. A combination of irony and craftsmanship, to gain perspective about and resistance against the rigid building practice.

Irony increased with Bernard Tschumi’s design for Parc de la Villette, Paris 1983, in which the serious note of science and the cheerfulness of public entertainment composed an architectural competition. The red membranes showed how the ‘useful’ and the ‘useless’ defied one another; architecture as erotica where ‘use’ is seduced by ‘pleasure’.

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Postmodern architecture was no longer heroic, but a competition with her own rules.

At the first architectural biennale in Venetian Corderia, 1980, a collective and functional approach was replaced by personal statements and perspectives of individual architects. History became a mer à boire of architectural theories. ‘Theorein’, whereas today, we understand ‘theories’ as more or less intellectual models or representations of ‘the real’, led to so many different perspectives, that a ‘perspectiveless’ episode was conceived; only an ‘instrumental’ design approach was replaced by a ‘reflective’ one, with a great distance to the building practice. The research on the lost fundaments of the germane discipline was seen as ‘paper-architecture’.

Worse, was the rupture between the critical-fundamental research on the discipline, and the tragic disengagement of the concept of postmodern architecture and her vocabulary .

Frankly, through The New York Five – with Peter Eisenman as spokesman- the research led to a rational architecture, based on an essential relation with language and philosophy, articulated by Chomsky and De Saussure. Via Derrida’s ‘intellectual critique’ a designing exploration became known as déconstructivism.

By means of a fundament of computer applications and building technologies, Deleuze influenced the creation of ‘fluid architecture’. Architecture liquefied; as a recuperation of history, postmodernism dissolved into ‘blobs, blows and blurs’.

The separation of the postmodern design from her formal-language, was caused by the popularisation of architecture,

in which history -as a critical mental power- faded into a bourgeois morphology as an identification of economics and politics. The celebrated postmodern expression ‘everything goes’ changed through Jencks’ ‘Radical Eclecticism’ to a stereotype morphology and landed on ‘Gesundes Volksemfinden’. Although from 1978 on, Koolhaas offered some radical resistance with his ‘metropolitan’ approach, the conservative New Urbanism was about to dominate.

Postmodern critique in the architectural education at the TU/e The postmodern period of the architectural education in Eindhoven can be seen in the context of the previous paragraph.

Primarily, postmodern critique was also focussed on the faculty itself, forasmuch as the SAR provided the functionalism with a much more radical method. Room for architectural debate arose. The ‘how’ question was substituted with the ‘why’, in terms of concept development. Architectural education opened up ready-made answers, and design was demystified by history.

Where graduation formed a finish line, in the postmodern architecture this line was absent; competition evolved into discussion related to the debate. The relation between the chairs Architectural History and Theory and Architectural Engineering consisted both a fertile dialogue as an unspoken competition. The chair of Architectural History and Theory attended international developments and -by organising symposia and lectures, stimulating the study of literature, and theming the architectural design- encouraged the debate of architecture. Theming means cultural interpretation. Daniel Libeskind

adds here: ‘architecture should not solve problems, it should enhance the mystery’.

The chairs of Architectural Engineering had a cultural embedment in common, but next to the intellectual approach, often an intuitive perspective was encouraged, focussing on imagination. Unfortunately, sometimes studying literature was assumed to be undermining the creative process.

However, the chair of Design Methods promoted a methodical and instrumental approach, where the period of Oxman indicated the relevance of architectural theories. The chair of Morphology approached design itself as being scientific.

The curriculum showed a broad variation of design projects and here the pollination between method, reflection and imagination resulted in Archiprix. A jury made the ‘implicit competition’ explicit. The overall of architectural achievements caused an ‘architectural culture’ that, in 1987, was generally acknowledged through the exposition ‘De Eindhovense School, The Modern Past’ in Antwerp. This exhibition travelled through Europe and gained respect for a high-standard architectural education, which –in the subtitle ’Built Images- illustrated that both technique as well as architecture were approached conceptually, in an open relationship; a debate without rivalry.

Dean Bax expanded the term ‘faculty’ into ‘ability’. His ‘Concepten van de bouwkunde’ from 1992, clarified the conceptual design and thereby subscribed the postmodern design, or, the race without a finish line, with academical ‘mental power’ as its main goal.

About the author Prof. dr. ir. Gerard van Zeijl is a Emeritus Professor in Architectural History and Theory of TU Eindhoven.

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Architectenbureau Koen van Velsen Competing to Improve the Built Environment

Architectenbureau Koen van Velsen (KVV) is not well-known for competing in ideas competitions.

We asked architect Steven van der Heijden, project leader at KVV, for the vision of the office and the way it is organised.

Text by Erik Hoogendam, Ryanne Janssen In what kind of competitions does KVV participate?

As an office, we have the tendency to only participate in competitions, open or invited, which suit our objective: improving the everyday lives of people using the public and private realm. We therefore focus on realising projects, instead of theorising. In this aspect we differ from practices such as MVRDV, who develop ideas through building but also through teaching and participating in theoretical and ideas competitions. There was a time in the nineties when it appeared a competition was not respectable if MVRDV did not participate. Also, after thirty-five years of practice, Koen van Velsen has established a varied and rich set of ideas, which often

form the basis of the office’s recent work.

Our new train station for Breda is an interesting example. The project is currently under construction and consists of a train and bus public transport terminal, retail, offices, residential apartments, public squares and car parking. Koen has once said that the design could not be based on new ideas, as the sheer scale of the building was too vast. Instead Koen based the design on existing ideas and themes tried and tested in earlier projects.

And does KVV participate in public tenders?

We regularly participate in public tenders, often consisting of two rounds. First rounds generally give practices the opportunity to present recently completed projects and provide insight into the organisation, staff, and working methods of the office.

For the second round a select number of candidates are shortlisted, on the basis of scoring results from the first round.

The output of the second round may differ per tender but often consists of a fee proposal and anything ranging from a design vision to a preliminary design, on the basis of which a candidate is selected.

Participating in tenders or competitions is an investment. It is great when participation is financially compensated but the sums involved tend to provide ample compensation for the hours and work put in. When competing, winning a competition or tender once in a while is therefore a necessity, also from a financial point of view. As an office we are fortunate to have a good track record although it is inevitable to lose more than to win.

A different kind of tender are Public-PrivatePartnership (PPP) projects. Over the last few

[1]

13 years we have talked to a number of parties but so far we have not yet participated. The idea of PPP is that a consortium consisting of a number of private parties designs, builds and maintains, for a set time span, a building or complex of buildings to be leased for the complete duration by a public organisation. The obligation of maintenance means lifetime-cycle cost and sustainability become important aspects. Also, PPP shifts the focus to buildings of a certain robustness and at the same time with an ability to adapt to the changing needs of its users, which are also characteristics of Koen’s work. In my personal view there is room for improvement, though. Projects procured through PPP tend to form an answer to the questions asked whilst I see it as our duty as architects to use our experience and knowledge to question the client’s brief in order to come in mutual understanding to a better starting point for the design. The best buildings are often the result of a successful and intense working relationship with the client and the users of the building. In the way PPP is currently organised, access to the client and users is limited. Secondly, the process currently results in a number of fully detailed designs of which only one will be selected, developed and realised.

Although this long selection process also has its merits, one can hardly call it sustainable.

What may the advantage of ideas competitions be, for other offices?

I think there are several reasons. Ideas competitions can be used as a test-bed, as a medium to develop and test ideas, which may at a later stage be used for other projects. Ideas competitions can also serve as a tool to develop (specialist) skills and knowledge within an office or as a medium to bring the office’s work under the attention of the competition

organizers, jury, affiliated parties, the media and/or the general public. Organisers of ideas competitions often explicitly state that the aim of the competition isn’t realisation, but this does not mean it may somehow not be the eventual outcome (however remote the chances).

For some public tenders a certain kind of experience is asked, like a minimum built square meters, or experience in building for example hospitals or train stations. Does KVV often collaborate to meet those requirements?

We often collaborate with specialist consultants from other disciplines provided these parties really add something to our office’s knowledge and experience. We have longstanding working relationships with engineering and building costs specialists.

Koen van Velsen is the author of all designs produced by the office and is heavily involved in all projects until after the building’s completion on site. As a result the volume of work produced by the office is relatively modest. Whilst projects may be of great complexity and/or large scale, the number of projects completed per year is limited. Also, the office does

not specialise in one type of building. For example, over the last few years the office worked on designs for a cinema, mixeduse tower with residential and retail units, rehabilitation centre, visitor centre and train station. The modest output purely in terms of quantity and wide range of building types unfortunately do not suit the current public tender process in which often several reference projects are requested of the same building type and all completed within a short recent timespan. In that respect it helps to see a young practice as Powerhouse Company (in combination with RAU) to come so far in the tender for the new Dance and Music Center in The Hague.

I was pleased to see a different approach in a number of public tenders recently. The requirements did not demand evidence of completion of a number of similar projects but a demonstration of the ability to design and complete the required building.

Unfortunately to date these tenders prove an exception but hopefully it is a start of a much-needed change in perception.

Figures [1] Working at the office KVV. [2] Architect Steven van der Heijden at KVV.

[2]

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Powerhouse Company Small Office, Big Competitions

[1]

Both offices and competitions come in all shapes and sizes.

Thereby the question arises: does the attitude of small offices towards competitions differ significantly from the way their larger counterparts look at them? Are there any differences, or are they quite similar?

Powerhouse Company, a relatively small office that recently participated in large public tenders, is a case study of company size compared to project size.

Text by Emma Lubbers

Powerhouse Company is an architectural office with two locations, one in Rotterdam and one in Copenhagen, founded by Nanne de Ru and Charles Bessard. The projects vary from furniture design to architecture, planning and research, in various countries. Powerhouse Company has its own way of approaching all these fields: “Powerhouse Company neither only wants to build, nor just to theorise on the reasons for a new architecture, but instead brings back architecture as an compassing, constructive and innovative practice.”

Powerhouse Company has currently about 15 employees divided between both offices. Although it is a small office it participates in many competitions. We spoke with Stijn Kemper, project architect and office manager in the Netherlands, about how Powerhouse Company, as a small office, defines its role in competitions.

A reason for Powerhouse Company to take part in a competition is, of course the chance to retrieve a large and prestigious project. In addition, it provides big projects for the portfolio from the office and a great experience. Gaining name and recognition, is not that much a cause, but more a result.

Powerhouse Company likes to see itself as an all round office, not only an office that is known as a ‘competition office’.

Although it is not a ‘competition office’, it has participated in many competitions.

The approach for small offices is not that different from bigger offices. A small difference can be found in the fact that big offices have to possibilities to put more interns on a project, and therefore have a bigger design team. But a competition has never been too big for Powerhouse Company. More often, the problem lies in the imposed requirements. For example,

15 [2]

demands on how large the office has to be to participate in a competition. This is the reason that Powerhouse Company often participates with other offices, thus to meet the required specifications and qualifications. Two offices with which Powerhouse Company worked with are RAU for Dance and Music Center and De Zwarte Hond for the Student Center EUR. For example, the corporation with architectural office RAU was very successful, partly because both offices have a different expertise. Powerhouse Company is better in analysing the program, designing and visualising. RAU is very good in resolving sustainable issues and has an extensive building experience (over 50 buildings in 20 years).

Due to these collaborations Powerhouse Company can meet the requirements, but definitely just as important: both offices can come to a better design.

It is not that different for an office like Powerhouse Company to participate in a competition. However, it has to occupy a relative bigger part of its employees.

Nevertheless, Powerhouse Company does compete in more than one competition at once. Although, when they compete in a big competition it is not possible to compete in something else. These large competitions may constitute a problem towards the end of a project; therefore they attract some interns and freelancers in the last weeks before a deadline. Clear tasks of what needs to be produced make sure that everything runs smoothly and that interns can contribute sufficient and effective to a project. But in the end, the responsibilities and final decisions lie with the partner or project leader. Those times, towards the end are very busy. For example during the

last two weeks of both Dance and Music Center as Student Center EUR the working hours in the office were over 20 hours per day. The last three to four days even around the clock with the entire office working in shifts. Everybody was making sure that everything was right from drawings, renders, 3D-models, diagrams, videos and scale models. All in order to ensure their victory.

Together or alone, Powerhouse Company participates in many competitions.

Unfortunately, competitions are apparently not that lucrative; in 2010 Powerhouse Company took part in 14 (larger) competitions, of which only one led to a further assignment. Only the Student Center EUR has been further developed and is currently under construction.

So, does a competition asks the best from an architect? Competitions could retrieve the best from an architecture office, but it definitely does not produce the best buildings. A good building arises by the favour of a good process, ambitious client, good constructor and a good contractor.

For a small office like Powerhouse Company the most valuable part is the bigger scale, the chance for bigger projects.

But times are changing and really big projects are rare. Competitions in the

conventional sense of the word might no longer be of this time. Powerhouse Company is currently not participating in too many competitions and even if it does so, it is in closed competitions. More often the office is involved with closed tenders or pitches where is asked to give a design vision. Competing in an open competition is very hard, due to the harsh competition; in that light closed competitions are more interesting. Nowadays though, there is the risk that offices compete in a tender with an extreme low fee without any guarantee of winning. This is a worrying development. Consequently, the problem is not the size of an architectural company, because competitions are not that different for small offices compared to big offices.

However, a whole different and new problem arises these days, a problem that is the same for all offices. With lower and lower fees we become entangled in a downward spiral. Good ideas and beautiful buildings are needed again.

Because after all, ugliness is hard to sell!

Figures [1] DMC, view from square (southwest) [2] EUR, Student Center, northwest view

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Two Offices, Two Competitions The Story About how I Woke up Underneath my Desk

Competitions in architecture can be experienced in totally different ways depending on the environment and the collaborator you work with. In the end it’s all about yourself, while the environment varies, you are the one that has to adapt and incorporate the appropriate role in each situation. Daan Koch tells us the story he experienced in two architecture competitions, in two different offices.

Text by Daan Koch A buzzing heaviness is raging through the inside of my head, which reminds me of a concussion or a terrible hangover. I wake up out of something that I cannot call sleep, and I try to find out where I am, who I am and what I have done.

In the slow process of awakening, I start to recognise the shapes of the world around me: the wooden floor, the landscape of table-legs, and the underside of my desk.

On a thin mattress next to me -they have mattresses in the office, 'just in case'- lies Giovanni in a similar restless coma. He stayed awake for almost 72 hours, to make sure that the plotter would correctly print all the posters. Obviously, everything was printed well on the thick aquarel paper, because Gio would never sleep before everything has been printed perfectly. It

was in these recent days that my colleagues and me endured the different stadia of tiredness, stress, joy, exhaustion, revival, hilarity, happiness and despair, and without noticing it, we had passed into a state of vegetation. My body did not seem to receive any signals from my brain anymore, but kept on working mechanically.

Now, when moments from last night come to my mind, I slowly start to realise what happened. Yesterday it was the big night in which the many weeks of work reached their climax. I remember seeing my boss sitting lonely next to the plotter in the late hours of the night. There, in the dark basement, his creation, his ‘child’, his proposal for the new museum was being printed on the paper in slow, hypnotising moves. He had worked tireless on the design for many weeks, and the team that stood by his side grew bigger day by day. Different experts and engineers dropped by to transform his ideas into concrete images. New materials, details and building methods were developed, which would give the project strength and radiation, and, at the same time, would solve specific problems that were mentioned in the competition brief. Ideas and concepts were produced, tested and either approved or rejected, until a new architecture came into being. The work gained momentum as soon as his image emerged. Plans and sections were drawn according to the new rules of the design, while in the restless model workshop the interns worked on models and photo montages. Following the fast pace of

wrecking workdays with short breaks and dull delivery pizzas we put together the pieces of the puzzle. Sometimes these pieces would fit perfectly, while others had to be squeezed in. But we were too tired to notice that they did not fit. And we had to go on!

On the morning of the competition deadline, I found my boss sitting exhausted and broken next to the final plans. This is it! Here it is: the design of a new museum. And despite the condition of our battered brains, we made some final wobbling thoughts. Is this the best design? Will we win the competition?

That was a morning in the summer of 2009. Today, almost three years later, I am working in another, smaller office. Today we will hand in the contribution to another design competition for the construction of 150 dwellings. My colleague, did not wake up underneath his desk this morning.

Even though he looks tired, his body seems to function normally. There is no stress, no numb pizzas and no mattresses for 'just in case'. We are just waiting for the final prints to arrive in an hour or so.

The work on this project started a couple of months ago. Since then, my colleague and my boss worked slowly but steadily on the design for the new city neighbourhood.

I observed how they refined the design and put together the different pieces of the puzzle. It took quite some effort to implement every square meter of

17

the program into the different building envelops. It was in this assignment that my boss demonstrated a remarkable knowledge of the current building regulations and a broad list of reference projects. Soon a plan emerged in which the general design tendency of the office was reflected in 10 orthogonal volumes. These monotonous blocks were only opened up by the obligatory loggias, which -in order to give everyone an outside space- were oriented to the south, west, east and north sides of the buildings. The apparent whiteness of the facades was later replaced by a playful composition of grey surfaces that would bring some colour to the whole.

Again and again I had the feeling that the essence of the design was sought as a quantitative solution of the requested amount of square meters instead of the development of an architectonic attitude towards the housing of 150 families in a newly developed urban area. It goes unsaid that a lot of energy had gone into choosing the right housing typology. However, I found it hard to suppress my constant feeling of déjà vu, fed from the former designs of the office. This should not come as a surprise as it is a custom for this office to gain new commissions by entering competitions.

Time and time again they invest a lot of energy in the participating in new competitions without having any certainty that it will pay off. This requires an efficient working method, in which existing concepts are often used and re-

used. Therefore, the office has not only developed a certain skilfulness, but also a great automatism. Here, the limits of the possible are not searched for. The boundaries of the program are merely being investigated, but never crossed.

There is a world of difference in how one can participate in design competitions.

Competitions can be won with the simplest, standard solutions, just because they follow all the rules and give answer to all the requested criteria. These designs usually guarantee the feasibility of the future building, which is a big quality.

But there are also offices that will engage in a competition to be able to think freely 'outside of the box'. They walk off the beaten track, jump fences and dare to develop new dreams. They choose the experiment over the repetition. Not because they think that the repetition is so bad, but because they believe that there is another way: a better way. They will search for the borders (and cross them), break down the existing conventions and dare to believe in new solutions for new problems.

It is important for me to state the deep respect I have for all the people who keep on investing time, money and effort and willingly participate in competitions.

And I do not support the opinion that good architecture can only be achieved when you keep on fighting till the very last minute or by reinventing the wheel constantly. But now, as the courier hands

over the freshly printed plans to my colleague, I cannot help but reminisce that morning in the summer of 2009 when I woke up underneath my desk.

Within a couple of weeks we will know if we won the competition for the 150 dwellings.

The construction of the new museum will start at the same time. But it will not be our design that will be built there…

About the author Daan Koch graduated from the TU/e in 2008 with the project ‘Invloed’.

From 2008 untill 2011 he worked in the office of Peter Zumthor in Haldenstein, Switzerland.

Nowadays, he lives and works in Basel.

3E RONDE 18

Huisje + Boompje + Peertje Blauw Nijlpaard dhr. R.A.M. van den To understand theBerg concept of (Richard) competitions, it may be useful K. Kooiman to know (Kim) something about

TRUDO

Afvallers

the people who organise them. We interviewed Rob Thijssen -project developer at Trudo, and Bert Dirrix -jury member- about the Woensel West competition.

Mark Kantersdhr. B. Jansen (Bas) dhr. J. van Vlerken (Jan) dhr. M. Kanters (Mark)

Softbody + wave Uitzicht in zicht INN Woensel Woensel WestztCompetition Fillié Verhoeven syntax architektur gmbh Studio Dou dhr.

D.C.L. Fillié (Dennis) dhr. A. Spauwen (Alexander) dhr.

A. Goharani (Arwin) Hardgekookt Het Schuilpaviljoen dhr.

M. Barth (Michael) M.J.M. Schrurs Van Aken Architecten Lunswerk B. Vuksanovic, J. Swinkels, T. Bullens, M. de Bruin, B.C. Luns mw.

M. Barth Sedelmayer R. Harte D. Hendriks (Martina) BD: Wants to be different in an obvious way \\ The end of the RT: A hidden theatre for Woensel West. mw.

(Isabell) track I. \\ AWeiland desperate surrealistic statement. dhr. P. Benisch (Philip)

3E RONDE Interview by Marjan

Het ‘GimmicK’ Huis’ Mohammadzadeh Sarab dhr. F.J.G. Beurskens (Frank) Why was this competition being dhr.

M. Supér (Maikel) organised?

Why did you not just give the assignment for the development of Woensel West to an architect? rt: ‘‘Together with the people and the local government of Eindhoven, Trudo has developed a vision for Woensel West.

The goals of this master plan included De baken van bakenland Bulb improving the economical, housing, and Studio NvN dhr. by programming, Joris Verhoeven educational situationsArchitectuur N.R. van Nuland (Nik)environment by and improving the urban Deven Architectuurstudio interventions like demolishing dhr.physical J.J.M.C. Verhoeven bad quality houses and build new ones.

(Joris) One of the most important goals was to J. van de Ven (Johan) improve the image of Woensel West. dhr.Somehow, L de Ruiter (Leon) Woensel West has a bad reputation in Eindhoven and the Netherlands. Therefore, it is necessary to invest money and put effort in order to change this image. One of our strategies is bringing Woensel West in news and media.

We designed the competition as a step to Bulb Inside Out introduce the neighbourhood to media Joris Verhoeven Architectuur Sophie Vallapublic, architects and the broad but also to generate Deven Architectuurstudio mw.

S. Valla (Sophie) as many new ideas as possible. This dhr.dhr.

J.J.M.C. Verhoeven I. reason Jelinek is the why (Ivo) we invited not only (Joris) architects but designers mw.

R. den Oudenand artists >

J. van de Ven (Johan) (Rianne)

Kijk op je Wijk Joost Hillen Architectuur dhr. J.W. Hillen (Joost) mw. S. Plomp (Sanne)

Carried by the Wind Hardgekookt SOFIESWEERS Interior Van Aken Architecten Design mw. ir. B. Vuksanovic mw.

(Sofi e) dhr.S.J.Sweers Swinkels (Jep)

dhr. T. Bullens (Toine) dhr. M. de Bruin (Mattijs) dhr. D. Hendriks (Didier)

Brabants Bont

S.H. Verkuijlen, J. Wilke Hardgekookt Brabants Bont Van Aken dhr.

S.H.Architecten Verkuijlen mw. ir. B.to PSV Vuksanovic RT: Related and identity of the city.

(Stephan) BD: A big billboard building \\ Communicating the dhr.

J. Swinkels (Jep) mw.

J.theWilke (Judith) identities of city but at the same time overwhelming the intersection. dhr.

T. Bullens (Toine) dhr. M. de Bruin (Mattijs)

HFV M Voo n Bee B dhr.

S J. va d d (W

INN Woensel Center Parcs Studio Dou FOAM architecten dhr.

A. J.J.C. Goharani (Arwin) dhr.

Vis (Joren) M.J.M. Schrurs R. Harte

Met “S nod le Bae He Stud dh dhr.

(S dhr. m (Wo (D

Het Schuilpaviljoen We maken er wat van Lunswerk Een en Anders mw.

B.C. LunsBoertjes (Barbara) dhr. ir. A.G.

Een B Woe L DJØ d and m dhr. d mw.

(Adriaan) ir. E.P. Tiebosch (Evelyn)

We maken er wat van Een en Anders

A.G. Boertjes, E.P. Tiebosch We maken er wat van Een en Anders dhr.

Boertjes RT: Niceir. storyA.G. about recycling \\ Innovative material \\ Fit in the vision of Woensel West to bring people together and (Adriaan) support them. ir. E.P. Tiebosch (Evelyn)

Bak Lus dhr. mw. dhr.

19

Softbody + wave Het Schuilpaviljoen Fillié Verhoeven Lunswerk dhr.mw.

D.C.L. B.C.Fillié Luns(Dennis) (Barbara)

Wonen op Zolder -IVRrose Atelier Wouter Hilhorst W. Hilhorst

RT: Poetic, sensitive BD: Interesting \\ The only exhibit with a particular philosophic and metaphorical approach \\ The impact would be enormous but also quite alienating.

EN MASSE

HFVEV (Het Fortuin Een lantaarn voor Van Een Voortuin) Woensel West Beerd Gieteling DJØST studioArchitect for architecture Inn the Aquarium dhr.

B. design Gieteling MSc. (Beerd) and Workingclass J. van (Jeroen) dhr. Poppel J. van Heerde (Jos) mw. L. Theng (Laura) Playfulness RT: Mad ideas \\ Weird, almost provocative.

VI XI

INN VIEngel XI Woensel StudioArchitecten Dou Ontwerp en Engel adviesbureau S. dhr.

M.C. (Maarten) dhr.

A. Goharani (Arwin) van den Eijnden M.J.M. Schrurs mw.

S. van den Eijnden R. Harte (Sanne)

Met trots en gastvrijheid Win-Win Ontwerp en je adviesbureau nodigt Edison uitarchiin het Van den Hout & Kolen van den Eijnden Baekeland BED tecten mw. Toer S. van den Eijnden ir. Studio F. van den Hout (Frans) (Sanne) dhr.

C. Bours ing. M. Steeghs (Castor) (Miel) dhr. W. Widdershoven (Wouter)

HetRrose Schuilpaviljoen WOENSEL ontAtelier Wouter Hilhorst Lunswerk dhr.

W.Luns Hilhorst (Wouter) mw.

B.C. (Barbara) moet

Hoekboek Een lantaarn voor Inn the BREGMAN Woensel Westbouw dhr. E.M Bregman (Evert) DJØST studio for architecture Aquarium and design dhr. J. van Heerde (Jos) mw. L. Theng (Laura)

Uitzicht in zicht

syntax architektur zt gmbh We maken erM.wat van Softbody wave A. Spauwen, + M. Barth, Barth Sedelmayer, I. Weiland, P. Benisch Een en Anders Fillié Verhoeven Uitzicht in zicht RT: Dynamic façadeBoertjes from fabric \\ Artistic \\ Flexible to open dhr. ir.

A.G. dhr.

D.C.L. Fillié (Dennis) syntax and close. architektur zt gmbh (Adriaan) dhr.

A. Spauwen (Alexander) ir. E.P. Tiebosch (Evelyn)

dhr. M. Barth (Michael) mw. M. Barth Sedelmayer

Bakelandplein: een Tuin der Lusten

J. Verhagen, K. Hermans, M. Wevers Bakelandplein: een Tuin der HFVEV (Het Fortuin Van Een Lusten Voortuin) Softbody + wave RT: Very liked by judges. dhr.

J. Verhagen (Jan) Beerd Gieteling Architect Fillié Verhoeven mw.

K. Hermans (Kristel) dhr. B. Gieteling MSc. (Beerd) dhr.

D.C.L. Fillié (Dennis) dhr.

M. Wevers (Mark) J. van Poppel (Jeroen)

Monroe WOW mauc Louis Dams dhr.

Boer (Sander) dhrS.M. L.H.J.M. Dams (Louis)

De hoeksteen als plug-in voor creatieve industrie

WOW Louis Dams L.H.J.M. Dams

BD: Interesting articulation of the architecture \\ Typology and scale not in balance for the vulnerable site.

F B A d d (P d d

Win-Win

BABYLON Ralph Janssen Memory Lane S S. Van den Hout & Kolen arc Architecten dhr.

R.M.C. Van dentecten Hout & Kolen H Janssen (Ralph) architecten ir. F. van(Maurits) den Hout (Frans)d M.C. dhr. ir. A.Cobben Kolen (Arno) ( ing. M. Steeghs (Miel) J. van Lierop M.Arch. (Johan) d

Blokkedooz Architektenburo WOW Hoeksteen Kerssemakers Louis Dams dhr.

E.A.J. Kerssemakers dhr L.H.J.M. Dams (Louis) (Ward) dhr. S Verhoeven (Stefan) dhr. F. op den Brouw (Flip)

Monroe

E W s m d

mauc Stem Monroe F S.M. Boer Denkkamer Architectuur & mauc HFVEV (Het Fortuin VanB RT: Artistic and fashionable. onderzoek dhr.

S.M. Boer (Sander) A Voortuin) dhr. P.M.J. Verschuren (Peter) d Beerd Gieteling Architect dhr. D. van de Rijdt (Dennis) d B. Gieteling dhr. S.dhr.

Maggs (Stuart) MSc. (Be (P

J. van Poppel (Jeroen)

20

too. So whoever had any ideas, was welcome to join the competition.”

Who were the jury members? How and why they were selected? rt: “Choosing the members of jury is always a very difficult and delicate task.

The main motive behind our selection was trying to assemble a jury with people from different specialties, with various interests and states of mind.

PLUG IN (WINNER) Fusioon.sk architects

BAEKEN MMXII (WINNER) B. Termeer

RT: Very challenging \\ Fascination of movement in architecture, using the location as a advantages \\ Hard to realise it but surprising \\ Provoking form BD: Doesn’t fit in the architectural conventions \\ Different associations \\ moving orientations \\ strong form \\ nice apartment with panoramic view \\ unique material and techniques \\ relation to pedestal \\ a big statement by its movements.

RT: A bon bon \\ Something precious in a nice box \\ Inviting to take some of it \\ Very complete proposal.

BD: Expresses the connection to the industrial design character of Eindhoven \\ Very suitable as an introduction of the future series of objects \\ Texture and color is strongly connected to context, sensitive and seductive.

BAEKEN MMXII

Winnn

BAEK

About the jury: Emily Hermans is a fashion designer in Strijp-S and is also living in Woensel West.

Ted Langenbach is famous for his Color Inside

cultural activities and organising trendy events and venues in Rotterdam.

GWSIWW

Eindhof

PLAnMUUR

W Z

WoenselWestWedstrijd

Rutger Hensen is very concerned about the neighbourhood and he also lives there.

He can really think ''out of the box''.

Impressie Edisonstraat

Jack Hock represented Trudo; the sponsor of the project. Trudo is responsible for the investment and the project management.

Impressie uitzicht met voile

Impressie zicht op entreezone

Ronald Rijnen is an urban designer and he works for the local government.

Impressie dakterras

Concept

Jan Post, who was CEO of Philips, was chairman of the jury. voile

Bert Dirrix represented the architect's discipline. He is also the designer of the master plan.

HOEKSTEEN

+

Impressie interieur

The Cutting Edge P. M. Szcześniak, bygg

The Cutting Edge

RT: A symmetric volume \\ Like a shark or titanic coming out of the water.

PLAnMUUR M. Cobben

sculptuur

House to Catch a Tree +

RT: One of the favourites of the jury \\ Unique story \\ A riddle about the wall: is it wall or is it gate? Is it finishing or is it voorgevel Turing down?

Is it starting of another wall?

BD: Conceptually strong \\ A wall as a mark of a beginning \\ Resisting to fill the plot. But wall and pavilion are not of the Impressie entreezone same powerfull expression. sokkel

W m

21

What were the criteria for the competition; what were you looking for? rt: “Well, the major issues were technical details and costs. These had to be realistic in order to be able to realise it, or make it possible to realise through some changes.

Actually for the ten best designs, there were two juries; an extra –alternate- jury, calculated the top ten projects to see if they matched the budget. Also the program of the building should be creative and interesting.

It should be something more than just a house on the corner; it should be an active public place. Another important point is the issue of sustainability. We did not introduce it as an explicit criterium in the competition.

So it was up to the participants to juggle with this topic. Not many of them did so.” bd: “The goal was specific: an icon! Of

course, we were looking for original ideas; not only in terms of architecture, but also in programming, routing and material. I was surprised by the quality of the projects.

The competition was a success, although I was hoping for more variety of artists and designers. It was obvious that most of the participants were related to architecture.

By this perspective, we were not afraid to choose an original and interesting concept, even with the lack of technical drawings.

The program contained an important part; the pedestals; they repeat in the master plan, although in different materials and textures the pedestals are related. Therefore the pedestal should be a recognisable part of the architectural composition. So the projects that are denying this condition were eliminated. They should not necessarily all make use of the same material or concept, but they should be somehow related.

It should be mentioned that since the jury

consisted of members all with different backgrounds, the criteria also differed a lot. It was interesting to find a project that was a good architectural object and at the same time had a creative program that improved the neighbourhood. We had vivid discussions with different opinions, interests and fascinations. The goal was not to agree completely but to come to weighed decisions based on respect.”

How was the process of judging? rt: “We had about 120 projects. Each entry consisted of two panels and one sheet to explain the design. So the jury received 200 sheets, but had just a limited amount of time. So we designed the process according to the great amount of entries and informed the jury about it. The two project sites were taken into consideration separately.

We asked the jury to read the sheets and based on that decide which project could go to the second round and which would be eliminated, due to bad quality or insufficient information. There was a third group for projects that were unclear to the jury. So there were three categories of A: good – B: need discussion and C: not good enough In the first round, the jury did not look at the panels and the sheets very much.

They had already done this separately on their own. Any discussion on projects was mainly limited to the category B, to decide whether it should be eliminated or kept in the judging process.

How do you define the place of competition in architecture? rt: “In our case, the competition was very helpful. We received a lot of idea which gave us a lot of opportunities. It took us more than half a year to finish

the competition. This gave us time to contact many media and news parties.

Many people got to know about Woensel West and about the competition.” bd: “The only way a competition is of

importance for, and serves architecture, if it has been thought through carefully.

The competition conditions should be well discribed in order to serve the architecture.

It should describe what will be expected.

“It is important to know that a competition is not about just finding ideas; it is about finding the best idea for a specific question. If you would like to participate in a competition but you can not find the exact question, or you are not certain of what is being asked, it is better not to participate. You would be lost.”

Disclaimer Rob Thijsen is an urban designer. He studied at TU/e 25 years ago and got his specialties in urban renewal and design.

Starting his career in a “DHV” consulting office and since 10 years he is working in Trudo with the department of project development. Since a few years ago he has been working to develop Woensel West.

Bert Dirrix started his career at the office of his professor.

He was a teacher at the academies of architecture in Tilburg and Maastricht. For 10 years he was a professor at TU/e architecture and urban design.

22

[1]

Trek-in

Wood Challenge

Small buildings pop up everywhere across the landscape. Their purpose is a place where people can stay the night. Unfortunately together they are making a mess of our natural environment. A sustainable and innovative design for a new hikers cabin should change that tendency.

designers to a pointy tent-like shape that everyone knows from campsites. This "recognition by meeting" plays a major role in the relationship between man, building and the environment. Besides recognition, being unobtrusive in nature is an important theme in the design. The third theme is the balance between open and closed; on one hand, the building is a shelter that provides privacy to the user, on the other hand, the design opens up to the environment.

Text by Kristel Hermans, Xaviera Burón Klose, Tim van der Grinten

TU/e project Winning the competition was the first, and also shortest, step of the overall process. A multidisciplinary project was launched after the competition, in which the designers were supported by Kristel Hermans and Wendy van Kessel (building- and construction technology) and Paul Kemme and Luuk de Kluiver (building services). This team was coached by the 'Bouwkundewinkel' and several teachers from various disciplines of the faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning of the TU/e. Together they had the intention to complement and optimize the concept to make the realisation of a prototype possible.

Competition The Bouwkundewinkel of the University of Technology of Eindhoven (TU/e) held a competition for that new, innovative and sustainable design for the hikers cabin.

The competition was initiated by Stichting Natuurkampeerterreinen (SNK). The preconditions of the competition were that the design could be placed anywhere and that it would be sustainable. Xaviera Burόn Klose and Tim van der Grinten added to this that the new cabin should be recognizable and feel familiar.

These additional preconditions took the

[2]

The outline design was based on a tripartition, in which the middle zone would function as living area with a roof, but without walls. The outer zones accommodated the required functions.

The main idea is preserved during this second stage of the process, but the configuration is optimised by changing the living area into an indoor space.

A research to sustainable building materials confirmed the choice for using wood.

This material was in the top three based on the more general aspects like the required amount of energy that is needed for production, the renewability and the lifespan. The final choice for (Accoya) wood is made by involving project-related criteria. Another strong point of wood is that it suits the natural environment.

The utopian design is self-sufficient in water and energy. Unfortunately, the regulations and the technological developments are not yet improved to realize this idea. For now, being self-sufficient stays a utopia. However, making use of solar panels is possible.

Therefore solar panels are incorporated into the design as well as in the technical execution, but unlike the outline design, the

23

[3]

[4]

solar panels became an option. It is up to the client to invest in sustainable energy. The sustainable aspect would be clearly visible with the use of wood and solar panels.

During this phase it is determined that the design, which meanwhile is called Trek-in, will be prefabricated in modules whose dimensions are optimized for transport. The modules only have to be placed on the foundation and fixed to each other on the final location. Wood is a good material for prefabricating as well as connecting the modules. The prefabrication is an advantage for those who will buy the Trek-in and it also guarantees a high basic quality and a long technical lifespan.

that everyone knows his role and keeps communicating. Working in such a large team means that each of the participants has his or her own tasks and responsibilities.

All the individual thoughts are not useful when they do not fit together, therefore communication is an essential element.

Everyone knows that communication and the division of roles within a team are important for a project to succeed, but in this real project it becomes much clearer than in a multidisciplinary project within the context of the TU/e. This was a big and difficult learning experience for the students of the team and made them experience how the reality in the building industry will be.

The previous mentioned aspects are some substantive examples in which the multidisciplinary aspect of this project is reflected. Although the team was familiar with the substantive matters of designing, the organisation of this project was completely new. The project was closely monitored by the teachers, but also the client and a sounding board group attended the presentations. At these moments, it already became clear that all participants had other interests, but also that it is important

The Trek-in is submitted for the Woodchallenge to conclude this TU/e project. The Woodchallenge is a prize for Dutch design students who focus their project on the use of wood. The jury of the Woodchallenge praised this project for being a well detailed proposal which shows off the possibilities of making an exciting design with timber-frame construction and a wooden finishing that is realistic to actually be built. Everything is incorporated; from the experience, functionality and

aesthetics to the more technical aspects such as materialization, sustainability, prefabrication, transport, details and installations. For those reasons, the panel of judges has chosen the Trek-in as one of the two first-prize winning entries. By winning the Woodchallenge, the Trek-in gained an even greater notoriety. Besides good contacts and publicity, winning the price also reinforces the design team in the commitment for not losing the qualities of the design during the further development.

Construction team There were two more steps that had to be taken before the design could be built. First, it was decided to move to an innovative method of constructing in wood to reduce the weight. In addition, cost-saving interventions had to be done as the initial design would have cost too much. It is important to reduce costs to keep the building interesting for its target group. Every member of the construction team had to deploy to the fullest to make significant savings without losing the essence of the design. It surprised the designers how flexible the design turned out to be and how well optimizations >

24

[5]

[6]

could be included in the existing idea.

Something else that could not be lost out of sight were the regulations concerning transport, building on campsites and making buildings for temporary stay. These points were already partly answered by making modules with transportable dimensions and by using an innovative way for making the foundation. Nevertheless, it is necessary to look at the regulations every once in a while during the other stages of the process.

The biggest challenge turned out to be finding a building company which dared to realize this challenge together with the SNK and TU/e. Many companies were afraid of trying this new concept. A long search brought us to A van Liempd Sloopbedrijven and 2Life-Art. It is this discovery which gave the Trek-in an extra dimension; not only the form and compact configurations, but also the way of making is unique. Materials come from demolition projects, therefore hardly any new material is needed; wood can be recycled and still remain of a high quality and where possible, other durable materials, such as plumbing and glass from demolition projects can be used. This gives

every new Trek-in a very personal story.

The Trek-in is a unique example for a large audience to get inspired and acquainted with sustainable building by offering waste materials a second life.

Also users will contribute to the long lifespan of the building, despite the fact that their use will be visible. Each new scratch will tell an extra story because demolition materials are used. This will only strengthen the character of the building.

As a visible sign of use has no negative influence on the design, people will find it worthwhile to commit themselves to the preservation of this extraordinary, sustainable building, the Trek-in.

This article is written at the time that the prototype was almost completed, so the tremors of this cannot be shared with you in advance.

Presentation The project started from the vision of the director of SNK, Marieken Nieuwdorp, and in each step, more and more people got involved in the project. We initially had no idea what was to come and how the

process would look like, but all the team members shared the goal of realising this new, sustainable and innovative hikers cabin. That proved to be difficult with many participants; we had to do a few steps back once in a while in order to be able to continue the process. By almost finalising the prototype and with the official presentation during the Dutch Design Week in prospect, we have learned that every realisation is possible when each member of the (construction) team really believes in the strength of the design and the team.

Figures [1] , [2] Exterior, Interior of the competition-winning entry [3], [4] Exterior, Interior of the preliminary design, created during the TU/e project [5], [6] Exterior, Interior of the final design About the authors Tim and Xaviera graduated at the higher education (HBO) before they came to the University of Technology in Eindhoven. They have both chosen the mastertrack Architecture and graduate at the end of August. Kristel has started with the bachelor at the TU/e and has then chosen the master tracks Building Technology and Architecture. She will start graduating in September.

The Trek-in has been a very special projects for the authors of this article, because they had the chance to experience a real building process and the realization of their design already during their study at the TU/e. website: www.trek-in.nl

25

Olympics

Student Competition

[1]

In 2011, during the master course of Architectural Engineering by assistant professor Jan Schevers of the TU/e, students were assigned to take part in a design competition, organised by the [AC-CA] Architectural Competition Concours d’Architecture. The goal of this competition was to design a free standing information pavilion for the Olympic Games of 2012, on the renowned Trafalgar Square in London, with the designing restriction of using a building material from a previous assignment. Three proposals were chosen by Jan Schevers, and were sent to the [AC-CA] in London as an entry for the competition; the projects of Hayato Mizutani, Teodora Cirjan and Filips Pitens.

Competition plays an essential part in the development of a student architect, as it involves filtering ideas, meeting strict deadlines and dealing with the cruel reality of being judged; all these refine and enhance skills and perception.

The ‘Information pavilion’, for the Olympic Games 2012 in London, was the 11th competition I submitted. It was organized within the ‘Architectural Engineering’ course, by Jan Schevers. The assignment was about creating a pavilion inspired by the material related to the 1:1 scale model detail, which for me this was the Saint Benedict Chapel by Peter Zumthor.

The main concept of the project was to create a simple gesture that would enable a different spatial perception, so the larch wood shingles made it possible to design a tissue structure in Trafalgar square: London.

Usually, I approach competitions with a clear mind and with the purpose of developing a new idea that would be extensive and fun. Therefore, I did not see the London competition as an educational assignment, but more as an enjoyable challenge.

The freedom of the theme was inspiring and pushed my limits to combine the course requirements with a detailed investigation, on the qualities of the larch wood.

I believe that a competition organised during a study course encourages a different method of developing a given assignment as it provides a final reward and feedback, which are more satisfying than a simple grade. The feedback made me realise that the project had to be clear, strong and understandable, to fully illustrate the concept. The feedback made me realize that the project had to be clear, strong and understandable, to fully illustrate the concept.

Now, looking back a year and half ago at the London Pavillion, I would probably make it completely different. Competitions are perfect opportunities to evolve in the design process and the architect’s profession is clearly linked to them, so the sooner the student discovers a successful recipe to prepare them, the better!

Teodora Adriana Cirjan

>

26 Normally, I start my architectural projects by observing a project site. I try to understand the place and how it is.

Based on this observation, a volume of the building, the use of material and a type of construction is planned. This is because, the project site is the most important element for an architectural design.

However, in the Olympic competition, it had to be started differently; material had to be the point of beginning, so a different design process was chosen. Therefore, this competition was more educational than professional; one of the main goals was to try a new design process rather than wining the competition.

When thinking back about the pavilion design, I can say that it would be a strong pavilion for a temporal use. But, if I had attended the competition without the task from Architectural Engineering, I would not have used the same design. I would start with observing the place, as I normally do, and the choice of material would be latter stage of the design process.

In conclusion, Architectural Engineering made the competition more difficult, but also it made it more educational, by helping me to try something new.

Hayato Mizutani [2]

[3]

I found that designing the information pavilion for Olympics in the heart of London – Trafalgar square – would be a tempting competition to participate in. It was more than just a university assignment; I wanted to reach a higher level as compared to my previous work. London is the largest urban zone in Europe and world records in sport are constantly broken at the Olympics. It is a grand happening! And it was an honour to be able to continue this story and share it with others.

With this competition I challenged myself to make a winning proposal.

The thrill of competing gives a new feeling

of excitement to architectural design.

The main goal of the design was to weave symbolism of London and Olympics into a site-responsive and sustainable structure that would synergise the material in order to hold a representative image of this huge event. The image would frame and contain the spirit of the power.

I think architectural competitions of today challenge the future by asking wide orientated questions about modern society. Going there and participating allows you to be in the very hotspot of what is happening now. A large part of these competitions is not even meant to be built. They are looking for something else.

Competition organisers declare that their mission is to promote excellence in design and architectural creativity. It is a higher question beyond there. Starting from this current moment - where are we going to?

Filips Pitens Figures [1] Image of Teodora's final design [2] Final model of Hayato's proposal [3] Final image of Filips' proposal

27

Be Ahead of Competition

[1]

Competitions can be a big leap for the career of architects. Especially for students who have more time, sources, energy and innovations. The following article is illustrating the point of view of a Masters’ student who strongly believes that competitions can bring a bright future.

Text by Piotr Michał Szcześniak

Dear readers, I assume that most of you are architecture students, like me. Sooner or later the time of designing the idyll at Vertigo will be over. Graduation also means facing a moment of choice. Most of you will consider which career path you want to follow. Some of you may even feel a bit afraid of the future. The present job market does not have much to offer, and even if you get a job, it may not be exactly what you were thinking of, when you started your education.

The most adventurous among us may not wait to get a boring job and will decide to start things on his or her own. But how can you get assignments more challenging than drawings for extension of a kitchen, carport, etc.? In the Netherlands even designing a family home may be a problem, since less than 10% of houses are designed and built by individual home owners. How could you get assignments that suit you, like a museum, a pavilion or any other utilitarian object? How to get recognised?

I would like to share with you my approach about entering the career, the approach which is very much oriented on architectural competitions.

Why competition? Before answering that question, I should introduce my background.

Quite influential to my approach, was the bachelor education at Warsaw University of Technology, in Poland. During the first years, the design studio was often based on a student competition (organised by architectural magazines or companies like Velux), which were then submitted. Some of my former fellow students have chosen

a professional competition as their final thesis; they make the design and their tutor submits it as team work. Moreover, the way you present your design in Warsaw is preparing you for competitions: instead having presentation, the projects are hanged in an exhibition hall in the form of posters. From that moment you can not add anything to your project. Everything on the poster must be complete and visually attractive. Teachers evaluate your project like judges during a competition, with the difference that they already know your project and the process of design.

The general situation of the architecture and construction branch in Poland is very stimulating and competitive. The constantly growing Polish economy boosts many investments in private and commercial sector, as well as in all sorts of public projects: schools, kindergartens, museums, pavilions or urban furnishing. Here you find opportunities for young, less experienced or less known firms. For most projects financed by public money, small and big, an open competition is organised. >

28

Often in The Netherlands, closed competitions are organised for smaller projects (according to EU rules, for all public project with budget above 4.845.000 euro, open competitions must be organized), which are entered by two to five offices, pre-selected by the client.

A concrete example is the young architectural firm WWA Architekci, based in Warsaw. The first time I heard about them was in 2010, when the World Expo in Shanghai took place. WWAA, selected as the winner in a competition, designed the Polish pavilion, one of the most appreciated pavilions during that Expo. When I saw publications about the design I realised that the faces of Natalia Paszkowska and Marcin Mostafa (founders of WWAA), were familiar to me. I remember them walking in the corridors of my faculty, like any other student. Winning the competition in 2006 for the Polish pavilion opened opportunities for the newly founded office.

After the first success came the next; the first price in a competition for Community Center Sluzew, south of Warsaw. Today WWAA, as an influential firm takes a very active role in discussions and proposals on shaping the city of Warsaw.

Of course WWAA is an ideal example and realistically only a few have a chance for such great and fast way to success. There is only one winner each time, so any other award may be a great opportunity to be seen and appreciated. Even loosing should be treated as a lesson, learning not to repeat mistakes in order to win the next time. Moreover, every attempt builds your portfolio, provides extra knowledge (especially in more specific assignments that require research), and

[2]

improves your design and graphical skills. Any knowledge and experience is an asset that makes you more attractive at the presently difficult job market.

What can competitions give to you? First of all you can decide which competition you join. You have much more freedom in the design and space for creativity. Even though a fixed budget is given in the requirements, designers always aim for higher - yet more expensive - solutions, which may be appreciated. In further stages of design, the project will be changed and simplified in order to fulfill the program or budget requirements. But that is after you win.

In January 2012, I participated in my first competitions -Woensel West Wedstrijd (organised by Trudo) and Green Architecture Competition (by NAI and Dutch Ministry of Economical Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation). Since I am trying to convince you to join in competitions, why did I wait so long to join them myself? The main reason was lack of confidence in my skills, constantly excused

by lack of time. Unfortunately both of the competitions did not bring awards. The verdicts were disappointing, once again I started to doubt my skills. And maybe again I was trying to excuse myself, but as soon as I am done with the graduation, I will search for new competitions. Take your future in your own hands, with bits of luck, lots of hard work and of course pleasure, be the smith of your career.

I would like to encourage all of you to participate in competitions, especially for those who have graduated. A competition may be a good start for your career; if not, there is not a better way to prepare your portfolio, before applying for a job or internship. I do not have to convince you of the fact that any potential employer will appreciate your entrepreneurship. You have nothing to lose, you can only WIN. Figures [1] Woesnsel west competition - conceptual scheme by Bygg and Piotr Szczesniak.

[2] Polish Pavilion for world Expo in Shanghai by WWAA architects.

About the author Piotr Szczesniak, master student of architecture at TU/e, former student at Warsaw University of Technology, since 3 years living and working in The Netherlands.

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Confessions of an Architectural Competition Addict Laertis Antonios Vassiliou is a Masters’ student who has experience in architectural competitions, both as an individual participant and a member of an office team.

We asked him to specify the differences between these two categories, as well as discuss his feelings and thoughts about his ‘addiction’.

[1]

Text by Laertis Antonios Vassiliou There is a story about when Louis Sullivan laid on his deathbed in a little hotel room, someone rushed in and said: “Mr. Sullivan, your Troescher Building is being torn down.”

Sullivan after rising up responded: “If you live long enough, you’ll see all your buildings destroyed. After all, it’s only the idea that counts.” Indeed: In times of massive copypaste, the big bet is to remain in history as a pioneer; the one who gave birth to the novel idea that secured him a piece of immortality.

It is vague, vain and narcissistic but it is the true characteristic of all architects who carry the competition virus. Because there is no better way to demonstrate (I would rather use the verb publish) a radical idea that does not need to become reality and in this way to inspire and get citations. Maybe there is an alternative option but it is by far more exclusive: become an architect or designer in the movies industry.

My personal experience in competitions so far is neither the largest nor the most successful, yet it has a satisfactory score. So far I have participated in eleven independent

competitions with distinctions in three, and in one team competition with Mecanoo Architecten, which got a shared first prize. This affair with the competitions began in 2004. Together with a colleague, we participated and won the second national prize in an architectural student competition. After that and numerous more competition participations I was still wondering though how things were working in a big office. This knowledge was obtained recently during my internship at Mecanoo, one of the largest and most popular Dutch architectural offices worldwide. This working experience not only changed the former perception about competitions in a ‘scale point of view’ but also in a matter of confidence. The competition has been launched into an overwhelming level, where competitors are no longer random anonymous architects but legendary worldwide firms of architecture.

Competing with offices that carry the name of architects you used to admire as a student of architecture and use them as design inspiration or reference may bear strange

feelings. In the beginning it may discourage you but after this first phase it challenges you and ignites a wild competitive spirit inside you. In the case that your office wins this competition is when you realise that you are in an irreversible pathway, feeling upgraded, unbeatable and powerful, ready to compete and win any award. After this, the way you are challenged becomes different. It is less easy to be impressed, your standards will rise and you stop bothering for small competitions; and yes there is a touch of arrogance in the whole story. Until the next project or competition appears and brings you down to earth.

Apart from the scale there are also other differences between an independent (student/open) and office participation.

The most significant ones are related to the way the roles are divided and the time is organised within the preparation; in a big office everyone is responsible for one specific part but in most cases, all members may suggest and in this way influence the final design outcome. >

30 It is in the judgement of the project manager to implement the opinions that are being heard at team meetings. This does not mean though that there is a concept right from the beginning. The concept is usually formed within the procedure. In a way it is maturing as time passes towards the delivery deadline.

There are times that the concept can be fixed during the last week before the final visualisations start to be rendered. Keep in mind that for most competitions that time dedicated by the office is not the proper one and many projects are quickly produced and delivered. For these occasions it is really crucial to organize the time efficiently.

In independent competitions there is one motto: Work till you drop. Students most of the times lack the experience to limit their work and organise their time. From the other hand, a big office usually standardises the presentation layout for competitions.

An experienced project manager, parallel to the concept, will work the presentation layout, the boards, colours, font-style, and then also make a list with the required material for the deliverables. Then the team can prioritise on the renders, drawings and texts that need to be produced and the work can be divided to each expertise.

What about open competitions? They are a treat for students, but a risk for an office.

The main reason why a big office will avoid participating into open competitions is due to the lack of winning guarantee. All the employees who worked on a project need to receive a salary for their work, which in the case of an open competition is plasmatic and thus a risk of a financial damage for the office. From the other hand, open competitions can develop students from ‘zeros to heroes’ and apart from the financial benefit it will be a useful asset in their CV’s.

Of course there is big drawback though.

[2]

Most of the times, being published after a competition means that one sells an idea cheap, but from the other hand life is too short to wait for the perfect moment or publication instead. Let me put it in another way: lots of architects may have innovative ideas for mega-buildings but only some of them will have the chance to materialise them within a lifetime and under their own signature. So what about the rest? Through competitions they have a chance to accomplish and demonstrate their fantasies and maybe become famous and a little richer.

Yet, apart from the financial benefit, why should someone participate in competitions?

Besides the financial benefit -in case of winning- participating in competitions helps you to improve your skills. In order to remain in a winning league you need to update, to refresh your skills, to follow the ‘graphic trends’ but also to avoid them when necessary in order to stick out from the masses. This means that the quickening is constant; browsing over Architectural blogs such as Dezeen, ArchDaily, Architizer, etc is part of your daily routine, such as watching any different kind of presentation making tutorials in YouTube. After a while

you become a self-improvement junkie, always hungry for more techniques, for more styles, for more skills. Apart from a good motivation for improvement is also a great experimentation platform.

Participating in competition provides you with the chance to test diverse presentation techniques and investigate what’s best for you and every occasion.

Architectural competitions are a bad habit. It is an expensive, time and life consuming hobby that rarely rewards.

Yet, they are also an addiction. And personally, I believe in the bright side of them, because there is nothing that can be compared with the feeling of winning one of them, no matter the scale of it, no matter how many of them you have won before. And in these celebrating moments I will keep believing and aiming for.

Figures [1] Individual participation in an architectural competition.

[2] Courtesy of Mecanoo.

About the author Laertis Antonios Vassiliou (1983) is an architect-engineer, graduated from National Technical University of Athens in 2008 and currently is working on his graduation project as a Master student in TALL (Materialization) track at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture. The past six months he worked as an intern at Mecanoo Architecten in the Yenikapi Transfer Point and Archaeo Park Competition.

31

Competitions: Ultimate Architectural Freedom

Where do education, architecture and competition meet? What are the possible discrepancies and tensions between these three disciplines? In what way are they related? How does competition fit in the architectural education?

Is it a genuine research method that contributes to an educational improvement, or is it mere a foundation for innovation in the field of practice? Furthermore, do recent graduates in architecture still have the opportunity on not participating in competitions, or has it become an obligatory discipline?

Here, Ruurd Roorda -architect and assistant professor at the TU/e, chair of Urbanism and Urban Architecture- will answer these questions from his positions both as a participant in competitions, and a teacher who judges students' work.

Text by Ruurd Roorda Debate Having been able to start an architectural firm out of winning a few architectural competitions at the end of the eighties,

and being a teacher at TU/e as well, makes me the ideal victim to write an article on the matter, on these pages.

Before trying to become very balanced on the subject, I have to admit that the importance of entering competitions is highly debated in our office. In this debate my partner often points towards the ineffectiveness and the cost of competitions, and I am always in favour of entering, for reasons I will try to point out below.

Brand Entering an architectural competition means investing in a full statement of self-identity.

It means telling whoever wishes to listen: this is who I am, this is what I am able to do, this is my answer to the questions you asked me (and that I asked myself). It is an investment that may lead to the start of a brand. Entering the competition of the Dutch Parliament (1978, of vital importance for the establishment of Rem Koolhaas’ NL-based office) means you make clear that you consider yourself potentially the best architect available. You need to be self-confident, as you start to compete!

Competitions are a way of establishing yourself, of showing off, of exploring topics, that are out of reach in an ordinary commission. The competition may allow you to shape your own career as an architect in an active way. Without competitions, it might easily be possible to get stuck in some kind of niche, or in repeating the same successful trick over and over again.

Competitions enable personal growth.

Whores A competition is different from a study project. Study projects are usually assessed following the guidelines of the famous 3 P’s: process, presentation and ‘product’ (product here means design, a commonly visible TU/e mistake). In a competition there is no process whatsoever to judge.

Only presentation and design remain as criteria. For the competitioner this is an advantage. The teacher is absent. He or she cannot interfere with the outcome.

The same counts for the commissioner.

The absence of process may turn a project into a highly original thing, an outcome of ultimate architectural freedom.

Professionally, absence of process also means absence of personal contact, that may persuade a commissioner to choose you as a designer and to get familiar with the project.

Usually, acquiring architectural commissions forces the architect in a more than eager attitude. ''Architects are pretty much highclass whores'', Philip Johnson said about this. If you happen to regard Johnson’s statement as a reality, and are getting sick and tired of the eagerness of your life as an architect, the competition will probably be a relief, for it may change the act of acquisition to a higher degree of objectivity.

Artistic Since a competition is to be judged on aspects of architectural content, the outcome of it generally leads to a higher degree of artistic progress than an ordinary commission can provide for. Usually a >

32

commissioner wants something that is already available (for instance: a couple of semi-detached houses of approximately 150 m2 with brick chimneys, as one of our first commisioners demanded), whereas a competition may lead to something entirely unknown before.

Entering a competition offers an easy possibility to rise in artistic ranking.

Don’t tell me you are not interested in (your) artistic ranking. As Niels Prak has pointed out in his book ‘Architects, the noted and the ignored’ (1984), all architects want to be ‘artistic’, and every commercially successful architect envies his artistic colleague, whether poor or not.

Since the crisis hit the architectural world and blew away the lion’s share of the designing staff (most of them trained architects), one starts to think that the competition might be the way to survive, to stay architecturally alive. Building very little does not mean that important design issues of the future need not be explored...

Battle Most of the above mentioned issues advocate the importance of the competition.

It may therefore be necessary to point towards some more negative aspects.

First of all, it needs to be said that a competition of any sort may seem very tempting in advance, but the results will at most times be disappointing, at least to the participants. All competitions lead to a majority of losers (I have lost a lot), all of whom will have had dreams of winning. Competition is rivalry, is battle.

And battle in this late-capitalist era is regarded as the major driving force of progress. Here, a paradigm shift is not soon to be expected. Add the heat of the crisis up to that and the idea comes about that only the fittest designers may survive. In this way a competition may become a sublimed death agony. You might be aware of that before you even start thinking about doing competitions.

Wrong Secondly, most of the time the wrong entries win the prizes. Of course this cannot be proved, but in my opinion it is true and has to do with a jury being always unpredictable. In a jury, most of the time a group of insecure egos put together, the safe and the fashionable -otherwise to be avoided charachteristicsmay suddenly become worthwhile.

And if a jury doesn not choose the wrong entry, it can do so on second thought, as was the case in the limited competition for the New Library of Utrecht, that was won at first, then lost and ultimately won by the firm of Rapp+Rapp in 2009, only after all of the entries were judged by a second jury.

The increasing complexities that accompany European tender (DBFMOoffers for instance) do not solve these problems, on the contrary.

And if a jury does award the best design, the commissioner may decide otherwise, as we can learn from the The Hague City Hall competition (1988, won

by OMA, built by Richard Meier).

To add up to this, many times the

winning design is not built at all, or altered, or extensively economised.

Waste But then: if you stay interested after this enumeration of errors, think about the cost: it will not be hard to estimate the cost of a simple entry, with two or three people working for two or three weeks...

Think about the sum of money that was wasted (and the architectural devaluation that goes with it) in the 466 entries of the ideas competition for rebuilding the faculty of architecture at the TU Delft in 2009. A rebuilding that will never take place, as decided by an authority that should have known better how to deal with the value of artistic property.

If you still insist in entering, do it and enjoy it! And in doing so, take Lucio Costa and his plan for Brasilia as an example. Try to make a plan that works, by doing as little as possible, and by letting the content have at least the same impact as the presentation.

About the author Ruurd Roorda teaches architectural design at TU/e and is a founding partner in Kingma Roorda architects, Rotterdam. This firm was established after winning competitions in Eindhoven and Den Haag.

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AnArchi

Agenda

Crafting Architecture What does craftsmanship mean in the current field of the architect’s profession, how is architecture being generated and in what ways? How is it influenced by the computerisation of the society?

These questions help to determine design methodologies and eventually describe the role of the contemporary architect in the building process. During the symposium ‘Debate on Crafting Architecture’ on 17th of September -which is organised

by AnArchi- these questions will be discussed and may be answered.

Formerly, craftsmanship was seen as archaic and merely subscribed as a profession which involved manual labour. But the conventional term ‘craftsmanship’ can be reconsidered in a more contemporary way.

The romance surrounding the architectural profession is that of a sketching architect following the masons work. But, as explained in magazine ‘De Architect’(February 2012) this is not the case in real life, the profession is considered to be an generator of ideas; observing from the side-line. The broad public shows a revaluation of the unique qualities of the crafted objects and so do the architects. The wish to produce and design sensory quality, and the growing interest for the process of making, confirms the new

appreciation of this meticulous approach.

It calls for localised designs from the smallest detail up until the city as a whole, but this can also be considered vice versa.

The cooperation in multidisciplinary domains and incorporation of new analytical tools and techniques allows innovation and new approaches in designing. The meticulous implementation from top to bottom, delivers different but equally capable designs as before.

A research oriented approach not only poses questions to urgent cases, but also proposes hypotheses concerning issues we confront with in this day and age, or that we might encounter someday.

So, what is actually the role of the architect?

What are similarities and differences regarding the broad variety of architectural approaches? During the symposium we hope to get answers about how architecture should be produced and what the role of the architect has become. In doing so, we hope to critically review the process through which architecture delivers its projects.

Bob l'Herminez Commissioner of Education 3rd board of AnArchi

September \\ Exposition of Rene van Zuuk Location: casla, www.casla.nl August 4th – November 17th \\ Exhibition of Ian Teh: Donkere Wolken Location: Kunsthal Rotterdam September 1st- December 9th \\ Exhibition ''Louis Kahn, The Power of Architecture'' Location: NAi, Rotterdam September 8th-January 6th \\ Building the Rotterdam A work in progress Location: Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam September 15th- January 6th \\ Meesterlijk, event for designers and fashion-designers Location: Westergasfabriek Amsterdam www.meesterlijk.nu September 27th-30th \\ STRP meets Discover Festival Location: Klokgebouw, Strijp-S Whole day September 28th \\ Food Film Festival: Afval is voedsel Designhuis Location: Stadhuisplein 3, Time: 16:00 September 29th >>

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October

Competitions

\\ Symposium The Next step (werkgroep Duurzame Stedelijke ontwikkeling) Location: RDM campus October 2nd

\\ Architecture at zero 2012 Register by: 01-10-2012 Submit by: 01-10-2012 www.archined.nl/prijsvragen

\\ MDE Project Hopping AnArchi, Location: TU/e October 3rd

\\ Schreudersstudieprijs 2012 Register by: 01-10-2012 Submit by: 01-10-2012 www.archined.nl/prijsvragen

\\ AnArchi Party Location: Ketelhuis Strijp-S, Eindhoven October 3rd \\ Gluren bij de buren.

See the most upcoming residential areas of Rotterdam (guided) for free www.rotterdam-archiguides.nl October 6th-7th \\ Dutch Design Week 2012 (DDW) Location: Eindhoven October 20th-28th

November \\ GLOW: Forum of light and architecture Location: Eindhoven November 10th-17th \\ Excellent Wonen & Leven beurs Location: Beursgebouw Lardinoisstraat 8, Eindhoven November 15th-19th \\ Agate E La Tempeste Location: PathĂŠ Dommelstraat 27, Eindhoven November 10th

\\ eVolo 2013 Skypscraper competition eVolo Register by: 15-1-2013 Submit by: 22-01-2013 http://www.evolo.us/ \\ Cyber Disconnected Socio Design Foundation Register by: 26-10-12 Submit by: 30-11-12 http://www.sociodesignfoundation.com/ \\ Generation Kingspan Student Design Competition Kingspan Register by: 31-10-12 Submit by: 31-10-12 http://www.kingspanpanels.us/ \\ Rome Prize Competition The American Academy in Rome Register by: 15-11-12 Submit by: 15-11-12 http://www.aarome.org/ \\ Thresholds of Self-Awareness Socio Design Foundation Register by: 30-11-12 Submit by: 11-01-.13 http://www.sociodesignfoundation.com/

\\ ARA-Home 2049 Student Housing Competition Register by: 30-11-12 Submit by: 30-11-12 http://www.ara.fi/ \\ Unbuilt Visions: International Design Competition d3/new york Register by: 01-11-12 Submit by: 15-11-12 http://www.d3space.org/unbuiltvisions/ \\ Tagged: The Inhabitable Graffiti Canvas Socio Design Foundation Register by: 28-09-12 Submit by: 26-10-12 http://www.sociodesignfoundation.com/ \\ IS ARCH Student Awards IS ARCH Register by: 15-10-12 Submit by: 15-10-12 http://isarch.org/en/ \\ XVII Panamaerican Bienal at Quito, Ecuador Colegio de Arquitectos de Ecuador Register by: 26-10-12 Submit by: 26-10-12 http://www.cae.org.ec/cgi-bin/ \\ BONFIRE Open International Architectural Competition Papay Gyro Nights Art Festival Register by: 11-12-12 Submit by: 12-12-12 http://www.bonfire.papawestray.org/

35

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