index
1998

25 schemes were entered for Archiprix 1998: twenty-one by students specializing in architecture, three for urban design and one for landscape architecture.

The entries were judged by an independent jury of experts in the above fields, supplemented by a theorist.

• Dirk van den Heuvel - theory
• Francine Houben - architecture
• Richard Koek - urban design
• Jurjen van der Meer - architecture
• Christian Zalm - landscape architecture

Secretary to the jury is Henk van der Veen of Archiprix's administrative department.
The plans were judged in January 1998 in Delft. Each submission was judged against its own intentions and assessed in terms of its most significant qualities and shortcomings.

General remarks
Before we discuss the individual schemes a number of general remarks need making about the image this year's Archiprix entries present as a whole. First there is the glaring lack of urban and landscape designs. After the recovery last year when these two categories were represented by seven submissions, the number has lapsed again. Indeed, the spatial planning department of Wageningen Agricultural University submitted nothing at all this year. The jury can only express alarm at the evident paucity of high-quality graduation projects in specializations that are responsible for designing this country's public space. This is all the more surprising in view of the fact that both specializations have been in the spotlight of late, partly on the strength of two surveys initiated by the government. The number of female participants accounts for thirty per cent of this year's entrants, slightly lower than the level of the previous Archiprix. The quality of their proposals, however, is high. In fact half the designers selected by the jury are women, including both the winners of the shared first prize.

Themes
Taking this year's entries, we can group some of them round familiar themes. Infrastructure is evidently a popular choice. More than a third of the plans were firmly rooted in infrastructure problematics. Many of these focused primarily on integrating traffic infrastructure with other functions such as dwelling and shopping. This issue is very much alive, the tasks fit nicely into the curriculum and the subject matter weds well with professional practice in that field. Within this category we can identify a distinction between proposals with infrastructure as the task and those with infrastructure as an enthusiasm. The first named category exemplified by, say, 'Local transferium for Amsterdam' and 'Soundtrack Residence, living on a noise-ridden site', combat the infrastructure's limitations and exploit its qualities. These schemes provide meaningful insights. By contrast infrastructure as enthusiasm, whose most explicit exponent is 'Highway Pleasures', tends to get bogged down in trendy solutions of little relevance.

The jury regards the development of a critical exploratory attitude during training as being of paramount importance. Plans illustrating this stance were well represented among this year's Archiprix entries, good examples being 'The lure of the production landscape', 'Research into the urbanizing of Hoekse Waard', 'Survival of a Suburb' and 'Working Forces'.

The two poetic entries - 'LOC AMOR titillating the senses on the land from the sea' and 'The Unavowable Community' - proved capable of holding their own against more practice-oriented tasks. By translating a personal enthusiasm into a well-defined problem and tackling this at the required depth, the 'imaginary' tasks were able to provoke interesting design research and lead to superior designs.

Schemes like 'Hyperflat', 'Netherlands Film Museum' and 'Infrastructure as architecture' can be seen as exponents of 'the new structuralism', in that they present a system as the solution for the problem posed. Most plans in this category, however, transcended the self-imposed system only with difficulty.

Another theme is the one-dimensional rendering of a programme into a building. Examples include 'Asylon Maastricht', 'Drug rehabilitation centre' and 'Centre for Psychotherapy'. Such designs are not entirely free of typological errors; one remarkably persistent inaccuracy was to treat the monastery as a building type. A fine exception within this category is 'Working Forces'.

The jury found that the site often failed to relate sufficiently to the design, with the building feeding off the site but not the other way round. This relegates a major component of the design task largely to the sidelines. Three favourable exceptions that forego such parasitizing of the landscape are 'The lure of the production landscape', 'LOC AMOR titillating the senses on the land from the sea' and 'Research into the urbanizing of Hoekse Waard'.

As to presentation, use of the computer seems to have made its definitive breakthrough. Until quite recently the pc was used primarily for drawing plans, sections and elevations, in other words, as a replacement for the drawing table. Three-dimensional models were very much an exception. Widespread use of CAD systems this year has enhanced the presentation significantly. In various of the plans photographically accurate perspective drawings provide an insightful look at both interior and exterior. The scheme 'Working Forces' goes a step further, with the computer not only featuring heavily in the presentation but more importantly in the design process.

Awards
After the jury had devoted two rounds to assessing the quality of all the submitted plans, they selected thirteen that meet the criteria given above. Looked at in the light of the task and the designer's intentions, they are strong on quality and exhibit no serious shortcomings. From these thirteen plans the jury then singled out those with outstanding qualities. This meant dropping the following entries: 'Centre for Psychotherapy', 'Islamic Institute on Mariaplaats in Utrecht', 'LOC AMOR titillating the senses on the land from the sea', 'Netherlands Film Museum', 'Research into the urbanizing of Hoekse Waard' and 'Second Netherlands National Airport'. Of the remaining seven, five schemes excelled in certain primary facets of the chosen task and/or possessed ground-breaking ideas but fell short in other respects. This plans were rewarded with a special mention. Two entries were found to be of such high quality as to clearly merit distinction. 'There goes the neighbourhood' is of a nerve-tingling architectural quality, while the great strength of 'Infrastructure as architecture' is its consistent and well-wrought elaboration of the issues raised into a truly inspiring design.

SHARED FIRST PRIZE

• There goes the neighbourhood
  Fenna Haakma Wagenaar

• Infrastructure as architecture
  Jolai van der Vegt

SPECIAL MENTION

• The Unavowable Community
  Hans Moor

• The lure of the production landscape
  Annemieke Diekman

• It's a long way to Duncan Village
  Jan Roozenbeek & Hedwig Crooijmans

• Survival of a Suburb (S.O.S.)
  Joost Glissenaar

• Working Forces
  Patrick Meijers