To win a contract, win a contest
If anything oils the wheels of architecture and planning, it is the design competition. Such competitions “are in the DNA of the design world,” said Jerold Kayden, the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). In practice, architects and planners face an “even insatiable” pool of contests, he said, which gobble time and resources with no guarantee of remuneration. “Competitions are going to be an increasing part of architectural work lives, for better or for worse.” This semester, Kayden addressed the reality and ubiquity of design competitions by teaching a course about them, PRO-07417. One April guest presenter for the seminar, Oregon architect Donald J. Stastny, said that it was the first such class he had heard of in three decades of advising. (He is a veteran of 62 competitions, from Beverly Hills to Berlin.) The final projects for Kayden’s dozen or so students...