Another year has come and gone, and we applaud once more the fine projects recognized by the AIACC and Savings By Design awards programs. As we do periodically, we have devoted the regular section of the magazine to an examination of awards programs themselves, in part affirmative, in part critical, and in part, we hope, simply helpful.
Ann Gray, FAIA, editor of FORM, has brought together a range of thoughts from architects who value the awards process highly. Her article is followed by two essays challenging the value of awards: Daniel Downey and James Cramer question their ethical underpinnings, while psychologist Richard Farson, PhD, argues against their effectiveness. A round-up of AIACC Design Award winners since 2000, supplemented by the always eagerly awaited “. . . and Counting,” provides statistical fodder for your further speculation.
On the how-to front, we present two articles, “Presentation is Everything,” by Hraztan Zeitlian, AIA, Alex Anamos, AIA, and Julie Taylor, and “Thank You for Submitting,” by David Meckel, FAIA, back by popular demand from arcCA 01.1. Along with these, we have compiled what we hope will be a useful guide to current awards programs.
If all has gone as planned, your copy of arcCA will have arrived bundled with A Century of California Architecture, a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Division of the State Architect. You may be surprised by the breadth of accomplishments of the State Architect’s office, which at one time, in the early- to mid-1960s, was the world’s largest architecture and engineering firm. Many of us think of the DSA now primarily as a regulatory body, but its more important role is as a voice for the incredible benefits that good architecture brings to society. In this context, it is worth excerpting a paragraph from Richard Farson’s critique of awards:
Award photos rarely identify the profession with solving the most pressing problems of shelter around the world, let alone other contributions architecture can make to reduce the indices of despair, such as crime, mental and physical illness, addiction, school failure, divorce, and suicide. Consequently, the public does not often look to architecture for help in those areas. But architecture can really help, because it designs situations—not just buildings; and situations, as every psychologist knows, are the most powerful determinants of behavior: more powerful than personality, habit, education, character, and genetic makeup—more powerful than anything. That’s why I put so much of my hope for the future in the design professions. But it will take a different kind of communication with the public if they are going to support the profession of architecture with hundreds of billions, as they do education and medicine, which are not nearly as effective.
We should all think about how to communicate most effectively architecture’s power for good, and we should lend our support to those institutions that are—or aspire to be—strong, clear voices for the discipline, among them AIACC and the State Architect.
Originally published 3rd Quarter 2007, in arcCA 07.3, “Comparing Awards.”
