We’ve just been informed that the Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Popular Music Center International Competition has been suspended. This would not normally be big news, but news of the suspension was made today, a day after the submission deadline! One of our readers, and competition participant, sent us the following in an email...
We’ve just been informed that the Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Popular Music Center International Competition has been suspended. This would not normally be big news, but news of the suspension was made today, a day after the submission deadline! One of our readers, and competition participant, sent us the following in an email...
As someone who dedicated many hours to this competition, and on behalf of my boss who spent thousands of dollars to produce and ship 15 (30 pg) books as per the submission requirements. We find this suspension to be an outrage.
According to the letter on the competition website, all proposals will be returned without opening. What we are wondering is, if this suspension, and participants were notified AFTER having sent in the submission, why doesn't the competition archive all the submissions for evaluation at a later date rather than send them back with no consolation for the participants?
Our office is still awaiting clarification from the competition officials...
Bustler
News of the suspension in confirmed on their website here, with the following message:
Date: June 8th, 2010
Dear Competition Participants:
Thank you for your participation in the Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Popular Music Center International Competition Project.
In order to ensure the process of the competition is conduced flawlessly, after thoughtful consideration, Kaohsiung City Government has decided to temporary suspend the competition. The delivered proposals will be returned without opening as soon as possible. For further information about the re-announcement of the competition, please visit our web site at: www.kpop.com.tw
I hope you can accept my sincerely apology. Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely Yours,
Construction Office, Public Works Bureau,
Kaohsiung City Government, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Did you participate in this competition? What are your thoughts?
27 Comments
"As someone who dedicated many hours to this competition, and on behalf of my boss who spent thousands of dollars to produce and ship 15 (30 pg) books as per the submission requirements. We find this suspension to be an outrage."
How does this differ from simply not winning a competition? There's always the risk of un-answered time and money...
thats pretty piss poor.
jacob, it differs quite alot from simply not winning. you do normally have a chance, however small of making your time/money investment worth it by winning.
it will be interesting to see if the competition reruns in the near future, but even if it does, would you really want to have clients like this?
well they were the clients who gave the project to reiser umemoto for the other pop musuem project combo thingamabob, and if that gets built i would say yes nice client....
I've done this comp before. This is horrible and unforgivable. I'm sorry to hear of such an unprofessional treatment-- outrage indeed.
"As someone who dedicated many hours to this competition, and on behalf of my boss who spent thousands of dollars to produce and ship 15 (30 pg) books as per the submission requirements..."
Our studio took a part in this competition, so we are in exact same situation.
It's better not to win, then to got all your stuff back without even being reviewed... Sad.
Anyways in both of the Taipei competitions (That of Resier-Umemoto and the music center that OMA won) there's a strong smell of something not entirely kosher... Don't know any starchitets doing un-invited competitions...
don't know anything about the competition, but a firm i worked for one summer was doing the botanical garden in taichung when, for whatever reason, the govt stopped making payments on the invoices (around dd phase) but kept pressing to keep going through cd's with promises the money was just being held up to 'technical' matters.
in the end, the guy kept pressing, rung up hundreds of thousands in back fees, was told the project was suspended and he wouldn't be paid. closed his firm, declared bankruptcy, and we both ended up (coincidence) at the same firm about 3 years later. he called me over one day to show me pictures someone had taken of the superstructure under construction. yep....
As this competition had the registered architect eligibility requirement, I think it is about time that the architects associations play a role in protecting architects rights. So far architects association registration has been used by the competition organizers to guarantee a degree of professionalism and liability, the question is what kind of liability can this eligibility check bring for the organizers, would architects associations be able to be as harsh in protecting their members' rights as they are in regulating their everyday operation? I doubt it. Yet, I still think it is a legal matter that should be handled by architects associations.
We have entered the competition and are outraged about architecture profession's status and our battles outside.
The complicated truth is that registered architects don't mind this eligibility check as it makes them feel better than their un-registered colleagues. Our battles have always been inward.
I think people should also be aware of the scope of time and money invested for this competition. The brief was hundreds of pages long and required months of work and coordination with multiple consultants. Not to mention the cost of producing 15 hard copy books for the submission. For any office that did it the right way (meaning they paid their employees) the overall cost of investment is easily in the 10s and maybe 100s of thousands for this competition. If this were in the United States, there would no doubt be lawsuits. I remember a similar situation for a competition for a building at the University of South Carolina. For these reasons, we need a better explanation than "In order to ensure the process of the competition is conduced flawlessly".
I understand things never go perfectly, but I can easily think of 10 better solutions than the 1 they decided on.
Yes this was not fair at all. They obviously just did not like the amount of proposals they received or the names of the firms that were on them so they chose to suspend it until September so they could get more proposals. Really not a fair thing to do at all. If it was not this reason then they would have notified everyone before the due date so that we would not have wasted resources sending in all the documents and drawings.
It is a nice project and we have a nice design that we feel strong about but it is not even going to be seen until we send it back in September.
This competition does not require anonymity so obviously they are reading the names of the architects on the proposals and making opinions solely on that factor.
In the announcement stated in Chinese, the organizer mentions it had been urged in April by the pop music society to include industry professionals and henceforth 5 additional judging positions were made for. Yet by June 4th, increased comments doubting the Competition's fair nature regarding the invited five music industry professionals as being unprecedented gesture and finally prompted calling off the review and returning of all the submissions.
It smells and reeks of politics, the Kaohsiung city mayor has a hand in things. That and I think central [think federal] funding for the project has not been totally approved.
@jump, the clients are different. The 2 Taipei competitions were administered by the Taipei City Govt, while these 2 are Kaohsiung City Govt.
Sure they are all in Taiwan, but they are different cities hence different jurisdictions, like NYC and Boston.
i can just see the brewing of another hybrid competition featured in archinect/bustler community.
This is such an unfortunate to happen. My team spends hours just like others and plainly wish for a result.
And ...na, we didn’t even get that.
Well, there is an explanation written in Chinese updates on the website today and I doubt no one can simply translate that in English. ( on top of that, the website was down for like an hour and I almost think they just even deny its existence)
I can give a briefing to everyone here:
“The excuse to suspend the competition is due to an increasing amounts of complain about the jury selection after its amendment on June,2. In order to comply with a standard custom in international competition and to make sure the process fair and flawless, we decide to suspended the competition.”
However, this article in chinese sounds like more closer to cancel to me but suspended. And they do announce to have the competition restart again in august and have the 1st stage due in September.
Well, none of the people I know seems to accept this excuse and we all think we should find a way and fight against this ridiculous and crude decision.
This is a long shot. But if any of you or your office wants to put up a fight, we want to gather enough forces and sounds so we can fight as a group.
If any of you know anyone join this competition, please help us pass this article on.
This email here righthandarchi@gmail.com will designated to this mission, if you email here, I’ll keep you posted.
I hope we all can contribute a little effort to alter this and hope to rescue and save the enthusiastic that remains in each individual.
Thank you
From phone conversation with the competition officials, they stated that the suspension was related to the jury selection, and that they are likely to reconvene in 3 months. Due to protocol, since the competition was suspended, they are required to return all proposals without opening them.
Basically they just have to postpone the whole process until September in accordance with regulations, in adherence to due process. There was some speculation that the late jury additions were, eh, politically influenced. So the submissions are to be returned as is, and basically I guess you are supposed to resubmit them at the postponed time.
Meeting that deadline was a big part of the design process and time constraints certainly influenced decision making in the process. I think this postponement taints the spirit of fair competition here.
I would like to see them keep the proposals and judge them later.
didn't realise clients were different. same website designer i guess. maybe same organisers too? lost of similarities with how its run.
we were in this comp too, so not entirely happy, but you know shit happens. we get worse excuses from real clients all the time. there was quite a bit of it when the economy was first turning shitty a while back.
dot, totally agree with you
however, sit here and hope they made right decision can be wishful thinking.
At this point, I try to contact people I know in Taiwan and we hope through some effort we can suggest something like you mentioned.
However, time is limit here. as fast as we responce, the better chance we can have our complain effective.
will anyone here willing to give a shot, email me @
righthandarchi@gmail.com if you want to talk in private.
jump, the organizers are in fact the same, but i think that's the only similarity.
hand, i think the best course of action would be to have a petition signed by participants requesting they keep the proposals and judge them later (i'm still not sure of their reasoning for returning the proposals).
there was an online petition for saving the hejduk housing project. perhaps you can look into something similar.
i'm too busy at the moment to start it, but you would have my full support. it's a reasonable request.
Thanks dot, I'll look into it.
I smell an archinect competition! C'monnnnnn paullllll.
I changed my mind about archinect competition. This instead should go to an arbitrator or to an international court.
I believe they just changed their minds and rescheduled the jury for September. Check the site.
Nice stunt!
Dear All
This is time for all of us to rise the issue to Taiwanese Government instead of Kaohsiung City Government.
Fair Trade Commission, Executive Yuan, Taiwan
http://www.ftc.gov.tw
e-mail: ftcpub@ftc.gov.tw
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) of Taiwan is under the jurisdiction of the Executive Yuan (the Cabinet). The FTC is the central competent authority in charge of competition policy and Fair Trade Law in Taiwan.
Check the website.. It has the English version....
I just found another competition of Kaoshiung city,
http://www.pncsc.com.tw/
That Project is located next to the K Maritime& pop site and host by another government of Kaoshiung ,another juror,too but the budgets is not too much different. The competition is open about a few days after the suspended statement. I don’t know If it is relevant to the suspended of Kpop project or not. The ridiculous paradox things is I feel that because of after carefully analysis the site for many days, I still interest in design challenge of the new project, but my partner is terrblely tired and afraid of the outrage situation that could happen again. So what do all of you think?. And how about the latest situation of the Kpop competition ? do we still have some hope?
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