Archinect - News

Rowan Moore on revamping contemporary competition culture

2017-09-15T15:10:00-04:00

There are still plenty of competitions – under European Union law, some sort of competitive process is required for public buildings. A lot of the time they work well. [...] But the chances have shrunk of a Mackintosh, a Pompidou or a Golden Lane emerging, or of changing the direction of architecture. Competitions have become managerialised, encased in regulation, procedure and risk-avoidance, and varnished in PR.

Rowan Moore of The Guardian gives his two cents on the “climate of caution” that has taken over architectural competition culture in Europe, where judging panels are more inclined to pick celebrity figures over emerging practices.

BART and LA Metro battle via Twitter haikus

2016-06-29T18:26:00-04:00

Oh, SF BART Twitter account—back at it again with the going rogue. This time, instead of getting real with folks on the platform, they decided to have a little fun with the Los Angeles Metro account, challenging them to a full-on haiku battle on Twitter this past Friday.

The official Twitter account for the BART isn't sycophantic or pandering: when confronted with customer concerns, it answers them with actual facts, even if those facts wouldn't gel with a traditional PR department. Now, however, the BART account has gone one step further and is outright having fun, challenging the LA Metro and New York's MTA to a haiku battle.

While it's safe to say that both the BART and the LA Metro should keep their day jobs, having a playfully-minded transit system is not necessarily a bad thing.

When not writing haikus, here's what else public transit is up to:

Is it time to rethink the culture around competitions?

2016-04-20T12:51:00-04:00

Working for free has been a reality for architects for decades. The hallmark of the practice is the open competition—a scourge on the financial and cultural health of the profession. But the argument against them has always seemed moot: as long as clients keep launching them, architects will keep entering them. Choosing not to participate, for some, seemed like a pointless act of professional self-sabotage.

"But in New York...a group of AIA chapters have shown that architects do have the power to push back against the wasteful and inefficient culture of open competitions."

We've seen a lot of conversations about the culture surrounding competitions in 2016. Just a few weeks ago, a controversial call for proposals for a wall along the US/Mexico border generated a heated discussion in the architecture community.

For more on the issue, check out these links:

Archinect - News

Rowan Moore on revamping contemporary competition culture​

BART and LA Metro battle via Twitter haikus

Is it time to rethink the culture around competitions?

Rowan Moore on revamping contemporary competition culture