Commentary on Competitions and the Al Jamea Competition in Particularby Paul Spreiregen, FAIA
Paul Spreiregen flying paper airplanes at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. There have been numerous international design competitions in the past. They go back centuries, and for both architecture as well as town planning. This is hardly the first. Yet it demonstrates some characteristics of considerable portent.
It is also a long condition of design in general that design predilections of many strains find their ways from their places of origin to places that are far different. Developing countries have long drawn on the design systems, “styles” if you prefer, of more developed neighbors. Even within the same culture borrowing from a distant past for present needs is hardly new. To borrow the old for use in the new has been a characteristic of architecture. It can be seen as a search for identity and order through architectural form.
Many a university, in Europe and certainly in the US, owes its campus form to some predecessor designs. Oxford and Cambridge are adaptations of Benedictine monasteries. Many east coast American universities are adaptations of the forms of Oxford or Cambridge. Many western American universities are transports of eastern “Ivy League” campuses. Religious architecture particularly has frequently derived forms from its own history.
But paralleling these phenomena has been the development of new forms for new needs. That’s been the story of western architecture for at least the past two centuries, new needs generating new forms, not to mention new industrial processes. It is what architecture has come to expect of itself. And it is what requires contemporary architects to look somewhat beyond their normal expectations.
All the while the most basic generating condition of all architectural design does not change. That is the human body, how it moves, how it sees, the accommodations it requires, including social interaction. That remains a constant, as old as human evolution. We can and do walk paths that may have been set down a thousand years ago. We can occupy houses equally old, or in towns built and rebuilt over centuries past. We may enjoy these even more than the new, because they provide an added dimension of time and memory.
The Al Jamea Competition
The four plans for Al Jamea tus Saifiyah Nairobi are well seen from this perspective. While they draw on ancient precedents in Arab building experience they do so with reason, intelligence and sometimes inventiveness. The forms they draw on are not superficial, but rather the basic stuff of architecture, the organization of space for human purpose. In this regard of course the designs vary.
All four design proposals demonstrate communality in the way they are structured around systems of spatial corridors and special reservoirs – linear streets and passages combined with enclosed gardens and plazas. That system for organizing space is ancient, a product of the evolution of cities since time immemorial.
Further, all four designs made use of decorative motifs from historic Arab architecture, some more directly derived, some more contemporary in sensibility. On that score, the often exquisite artisanship of the Arab world’s golden years cannot be expected to be replicated, but it can be emulated using modern industrialized means of fabrication, as some of the designers have successfully attempted.
And all four designs employed gardening and planting, one of the great traditions of Arab architecture, the garden constituting paradise as described in the Koran. With that, water was well employed as another element of design, both for its visual delights as much as its practical cooling effects.
All of this recalls earlier precedents in Arab architecture. Among them are the accomplishments of the Ottoman architect, and contemporary of Michelangelo, Koca Mimar Sinan (the writer’s favorite architect of all time) or the more contemporary Egyptian architect Hassan Fahti. This same level of architectural excellence is to be seen in the contemporary works recognized by the Aga Kahn Foundation.
Finally, the larger and even obvious portent of this competition for modern architecture deserves to be recognized. This competition managed to balance the best of contemporary western architectural thinking with the best of traditional eastern sensibilities. May this be the larger gift of the Al Jamea tus Saifiyah Nairobi design effort.
Considering the research, presentation requirements, and amount of travel required—one trip to Nairobi, a trip to Mumbai for the final presentations—all to be covered by this stipend, the only individual team to have a slight advantage here was the Benninger / MruttuSalmann team, in that they were already headquartered in Mumbai and did not have to travel for the final session.
This subject was most complex and highly demanding. The graphics required to portray the designs were commensurately extensive, but not excessive for the task at hand. So the problem devolves back to fee. The competition reviewed here is typical of what sponsors have now come to expect as the “new norm.” That is not likely to change. But it does not advance the competition system to underpay participating competitors.
Paul Spreiregen, FAIA, has written extensively on design competitions, and was Professional Advisor for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Intelsat Headquarters in Washington DC, the ATT/Bell Laboratories Solid States Technologies Laboratory in Allentown PA, and the City County Buildings in Mobile Al, among others. |
 Completed IMEX by Tuck Hinton Architects. Photo courtesy Anecdote It is not often that we look back to a competition that occurred three decades ago that was also covered in detail by COMPETITIONS (Vol. 4, #4; pp. 14-27). What made the Chattanooga IMAX different back in 1994 was that the article covering that competition was authored by Prof. Marleen Davis, then Dean of the University of Tennessee’s School of Architecture and a member of the jury panel. This was not just a short article, covering the high points of the competition with a few talking points about the winning design. This 4,000+ word document also described in detail the jury’s observations about all the finalists, including the honorable mentions—one of the few times we have gained such a detailed glimpse in this country from the inside of the competition process. Read more… Preparation and Organization of Design Competitions  [phase 1] Benjamin Hossbach / Christian Lehmhaus / Christine Eichelmann 210 × 230 mm, 192 pp. over 600 images softcover ISBN 978-3-86922-316-2 (English) ISBN 978-3-86922-240-0 (German) Dom Publishers €48 in EU (For price abroad, see below) Founded in 1998 in Berlin, Phase 1 has been a principal player in the organization and facilitation of design competitions, not only in Germany, but abroad as well. The accomplishments of the firm have been well documented in three volumes—The Architecture of Competitions—beginning in 2i006. Whereas these books mainly focused on the results of the competitions they have administered, the present work, Fundamentals of Competition Management, takes one from the very beginnings of the competition process to its conclusion. The authors envisioned the publication as “three three books in one: one „blue book“ with example projects, one „yellow book“ with statements and the „white book“ with the actual guideline to competition management.” Although there have been a number of handbooks covering the administration of designcompetitions a study covering the entire process in such detail is a welcome addition to the the literature in this field. As a contribution to this important democratic process that has yielded exceptional design for decades, this volume is not only valid for Europe, but a current overview of the process for those globally who wish to raise the level of design by virtue of a design competition. -Ed Foreign institutions wishing to obtain a copy of the book will recieve a discount to cover the cost of foreign shipping. To obtain a copy for that offer, go to: [email protected] Winning entry by Luca Poian Forms Image ©Filippo Bolognese images Good design seldom happens in a vacuum. And so it was with an international competition for a new mosque in Preston, U.K. A mid-sized city of 95,000, and located in Lancashire near the west coast and almost equally distant from London and Glasgow, Preston has a storied past, going all the way back to the Romans and the late Middle Ages, where it was the site of significant battles. During the Industrial Revolution, the city prospered, and it was not until after World War II that Preston experienced the British version of the U.S. Rust Belt. In the meantime, the city has experienced an upswing in economic activity, with an unemployment rate of only 3%. Aside from the appearance of new industries, the city has benefitted from the establishment of Central Lancashire University (CLU), which employs over 3,000 faculty and staff, and, as such, is one of the regions major employers. Any new university requires new facilities, and one of the most outstanding examples of this at CLU was the new Student Centre and Plaza, a result of a 2016 RIBA-sponsored competition won by Hawkins/Brown Read More
Changdong Station winner – image ©D & B Partners Architects
Whereas international competitions for real projects have become a rarity lately, Korea is a welcome exception. Among the plethora of competition announcements we receive almost weekly, several have ended with foreign firms as winners. But the history of welcoming international participants does go back several years. One notable early example was the Incheon Airport competition, won by Fentress Bradburn Architects (1962-70).
Among the more recent successes of foreign firms was the Busan Opera House competition, won by Snøhetta (2013-) and the Sejong Museum Gardens competition, won by Office OU, Toronto (2016-2023).
Read more…  1st Place: Zaha Hadid Architects – night view from river – Render by Negativ Arriving to board a ferry boat or cruise ship used to be a rather mundane experience. If you had luggage, you might be able to drop it off upon boarding, assuming that the boarding operation was sophisticated enough. In any case, the arrival experience was nothing to look forward to. I recall boarding the SS United States for a trip to Europe in the late 1950s. Arriving at the pier in New York, the only thought any traveler had was to board that ocean liner as soon as possible, find one’s cabin, and start exploring. If you were in New York City and arriving early, a nearby restaurant or cafe would be your best bet while passing time before boarding. Read more…  Helsinki Central Library, by ALA Architects (2012-2018) The world has experienced a limited number of open competitions over the past three decades, but even with diminishing numbers, some stand out among projects in their categories that can’t be ignored for the high quality and degree of creativity they revealed. Included among those are several invited competitions that were extraordinary in their efforts to explore new avenues of institutional and museum design. Some might ask why the Vietnam Memorial is not mentioned here. Only included in our list are competitions that were covered by us, beginning in 1990 with COMPETITIONS magazine to the present day. As for what category a project under construction (Science Island), might belong to or fundraising still in progress (San Jose’s Urban Confluence or the Cold War Memorial competition, Wisconsin), we would classify the former as “built” and wait and see what happens with the latter—keeping our fingers crossed for a positive outcome. Read More…  2023 Teaching and Innovation Farm Lab Graduate Student Honor Award by USC (aerial view) Architecture at Zero competitions, which focus on the theme, Design Competition for Decarbonization, Equity and Resilience in California, have been supported by numerous California utilities such as Southern California Edison, PG&E, SoCAl Gas, etc., who have recognized the need for better climate solutions in that state as well as globally. Until recently, most of these competitions were based on an ideas only format, with few expectations that any of the winning designs would actually be realized. The anticipated realization of the 2022 and 2023 competitions suggests that some clients are taking these ideas seriously enough to go ahead with realization. Read more… |