And, the winner of the award for most awards is....

Our firm has been submitting projects to architectural design competitions for years. I have even judged a few. Everybody gets pretty excited when we pick up some piece of hardware, but I’m not sure what any of it proves. Yeah, we can call ourselves an “award winning firm”, but really that’s not a very high bar to clear. It seems there is a competition for everybody, and as long as you shoot low enough, you’re bound to win something. A lot of the awards programs are simply a way for magazines to sell advertising, fund raising opportunities for myriad organizations, or a way for the industry to pat itself on the back. Some of these awards programs are businesses in themselves with entry fees and awards banquets simply as a money making venture for an entrepreneur. These groups want to spread the awards around, especially to the firms with deep pockets. They want to keep them entering.

I realize that it’s part of our culture; this need to compete, but it’s silly, the need to judge our projects against others and award a winner. I’ve read that it is the large egos in Architecture that need reinforcement. I’d say our profession could use a little more self-esteem. I don’t need other people to judge my work. I can do that all on my own. If some judge at an awards program doesn’t like it, it doesn’t make it better or worse. Does this sound like sour grapes? It shouldn’t we’ve had our share of recognition. I also know that I don’t have the clients, or budget to do many of the “award winning” projects gracing magazine covers.

Architectural projects are so different. Unless the budget, client, program, and neighborhood are exactly the same, you’re comparing apples to oranges. Some competitions break their awards into categories; trying to come closer to leveling the playing field, but really, this just spreads out the awards further. Is it prestigious to win an award for “Best production house 2,000-2,500 square feet in Las Vegas”?

I’m not saying that honoring projects that are outstanding is necessarily a bad thing. But, if you need a judge to tell you that you’ve done well, I’d say you should become a better self critic. I’ve seen my partners do a complete one-eighty based on a project winning some sort of award. A project they couldn’t stand one day was suddenly awesome the next, based on the evaluation of some strangers looking at a book of photographs.

I guess the press is nice, but do clients really hire you because you have a couple of plaques on the wall? I don’t think so. They hire you because you know what you are doing. Awards don’t necessarily prove that. They do prove that you can find the right angle from which to take a photo and you can write a creative description that pushed all of the judges’ buttons.