 |
Twenty-five projects were entered for Archiprix 1999: nineteen by students specializing in architecture, three for urban design and three for landscape architecture. All told this is three less than the maximum number of entries allowed. Amsterdam Academy of Architecture submitted three plans instead of the permissible five, and the architecture faculty of the TU Delft eight rather than nine. These are signs that this year the number of high-quality graduation projects at those two institutions is below par. More encouraging is the presence of two entries from the physical planning and rural development department of Wageningen Agricultural University. This is only the second time that Wageningen has submitted its permitted maximum of two plans. By way of completing the statistics, the number of female students competing has dropped to less than a quarter, six out of this year's twenty-six participants. For the previous two years the ratio was one in three. Finally, eight of the projects were designed either wholly or partially for a site abroad. At thirty per cent the number of foreign sites is as high as it was last year.
|
Conditions of entry
Each year the Dutch institutions of higher education whose main subjects are architecture, urban design and/or landscape architecture select their best graduation projects of the past year and submit these to Archiprix. The selection by the institutions for possible inclusion in Archiprix takes place in accordance with the conditions of entry and the selection criteria. That the institution themselves do the selecting is because they are best equipped to assess the intrinsic quality of the student projects. Moreover, the institutions are closely involved with the history of each such project. It is they who fix the requirements that the projects are to meet, and theirs the responsibility for coaching and counselling the graduates. An independent selection committee would have a hard time making a well-considered selection on the basis of arguments of content, if only because of the sheer number of graduation schemes in the Netherlands. The conditions of entry to which the submitted schemes have to comply include a number of formal regulations relating to such issues as the closing date for entry and the number of projects. Thus, the institutes concerned could each submit the following number of plans to Archiprix 1999: Delft 9, Rotterdam (including Arnhem and Groningen) 5, Amsterdam (including Maastricht) 5, Eindhoven 4, Tilburg 3 and Wageningen 2. This means that a maximum of 28 could be accepted.
Besides these formal regulations, the conditions of entry contain the criteria underlying both the selection of plans by the institutes and the adjudication. The quintessential requirements are:
- that the outcome of the entry is an architectural, urban or landscape design
- that this has an explicitly stated issue or issues as its basic premise
- that there is a detailed account of how, working from the above issues, the scheme was arrived at.
When judging the plans the following elements are successively taken into account: the analysis of the task; the conceptual strength of the project; the spatial quality of the design together with a sensitive deployment of resources; an account of the plan in words and images; and finally the cohesion enjoyed by these elements. This cohesion is of major importance as it serves to demonstrate the entrant's mastery of the entire process insofar as this translates the set task into an appropriate three-dimensional solution.
The criteria form a general framework for judging the submitted projects. The executive board of Archiprix sees little point in using criteria drawn up in advance to assess the entries as these are so varied and there is no question of a common programme. Criteria relevant to one project may have no bearing at all on another. The jury therefore bases its judgement on the objectives of each individual plan, ascertaining the extent to which each design adequately resolves the issue raised by the task.
The jury
Each year the executive board of Archiprix assembles an independent jury of experts. The line-up never includes the same people twice. In the interests of fairness, no persons directly connected with preparing a submitted scheme or directly related to a designer of such, may sit on the jury. The jury's task is to assess the submitted plans on their own merits and briefly comment on the substance of each. In addition it has to select the best entries and divide the prize money among them accordingly. There are five members of the jury, four experts in the three disciplines concerned and a theorist. The line-up of the jury who judged the graduation projects of Archiprix 1999 is as follows:
- Els Bet - urban design
- Herman de Kovel - architecture
- Lodewijk van Nieuwenhuijze - landscape architecture
- Bob van Reeth - architecture
- Ann van Sevenant - theory
Secretary to the jury is Henk van der Veen of Archiprix's administrative department. The entries were judged in January and February 1999 in Delft.
General remarks
Craft and concept
For some time now graduation projects have revealed a shift from 'demonstrating one's professional skills' to 'thinking in concepts'. This obtains as much for architecture as for urban design and landscape architecture. The two approaches can proceed in concert and each deserves its own place, partly in view of the nature of the disciplines and the fact that design education is more than just training for a profession. For designing in practice, professional competence is of the utmost significance. Likewise, for the development of one's discipline, abilities on the theoretical front and the conceptual approach are important. Designers should also be capable of generating new solutions for the latest social trends. This is something that should be part and parcel of academic training.
In the footsteps of luminaries like Rem Koolhaas, the search for new concepts is more popular than ever. One problem here is that developing riveting concepts is not everybody's province and that many would-be Rems tend to bite off more than they can chew. This problem rears its head among the entries to the 1999 Archiprix. This state of affairs is all the more oppressing in that a design often seizes up after such a concept has been found. Fairly often there is no further development, or the motivation and/or written description are wanting. In only a few cases did the text attain the level of the detailing and materiality. Skilfully fleshing out the concept is the only way to prove its worth. Without this, it gets no further than a graphic image.
Presentation
To obtain insight into a plan it is very important how that plan is presented. One of the adjudication criteria is 'an account of the plan in words and images'. The projects moreover have to be judged on their own intentions. These intentions should therefore be brought out in the presentation. Regrettably this is by no means always the case. In general the presentations fail to accurately encapsule the projects. The presentation in words and images should make accessible all the key intrinsic aspects of the task. Often the presentation is unduly focused on the image so that essential backgrounds fail to receive the attention they deserve. Schemes that derive directly from an existing brief have an easier time of it in this respect. The context is often a familiar one so that less explanation is necessary. These plans can as a rule be judged effectively from the design drawings and a brief account. In some cases, though, a more expansive design account is indispensable if any assessment at all is to be given. This applies in particular to the more theory-oriented submissions. These create their own theoretical context within which the scheme has to be judged. These plans require a presentation that gives access to the realm of ideas on which the design is predicated. There are times when such projects lack all explanation, which makes judging them a hopeless task. Again, most urban and landscape designs contain aspects that are difficult if not impossible to explain in images alone. They demand a written account that gives full insight into the interpretation of the task and the developed strategy.
|
Awards
The jury does not claim to be able to pass absolute judgement on the quality of the plans selected by the design insitutions for Archiprix 1999. It passes comment on each and on the entries as a whole. Underpinning the assessment are the criteria drawn up by Archiprix, in combination with its own background and expertise. Only after studying all the schemes is it possible to compare the quality of individual entries. After the selection procedure at the institutions, the jury presents a second filter. The projects that emerge successfully from this stage of the proceedings get either a prize or a special mention. In view of the plans' diversity and the fact that the line-up of the jury is entirely different each year, this is not just the fairest approach but also the most realistic. Comparing the intrinsic qualities of current schemes with those of previous years or from another context is an arduous business. To reach a well-rounded judgement the jury assesses the entries in two sessions of a day each. Prior to adjudication, the jury has access to a compilation of the design reports, for which each entrant submits one A4 sheet giving the essentials of his or her plan. The members of the jury then begin individually to assess the schemes. After this individual round lasting half a day, a round partly intended to avoid collective bias, the plans are discussed by the jury as a whole. In the period between the two adjudication days its members peruse the design reports. At the second meeting the jury once again reviews all the plans, drawing the content of the written reports into the discussion. It then makes an inventory of projects whose qualities makes them likely candidates for a prize or special mention.
This year it transpires that no single scheme is without flaws, and none stands out noticeably from the others. Hence the jury's decision to award three prizes to entries that combine a high quality in their field with ground-breaking ideas and/or a great degree of individuality. In addition the jury has selected two plans for a special mention. These contain elements of outstanding quality but fall short in primary facets of the task.
PRIZES
- Caspar Slijpen - Marl-digging equals three times profit
- Jonas Strous - City of a thousand and one dreams
- Henk Korteweg - Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven
SPECIAL MENTIONS
- Marc Polman - Banana
- Ellen Marcusse - Octopus's Garden - Urban Landscape Design Study
|