In this fascinating piece, Ben Willis from Common Edge highlights very intrinsic values of Architecture Awards that the architectural juries need to point out in details. Willis' piece proposes a concrete framework of evaluation of the Architecture Awards, focusing on their scope and real purpose-beyond the building's aesthetic discourse and mostly being 'celebrity architects' in the global media via many Awards.

Awards season is here: the Oscars, the Grammys, the Golden Globes.  Unlike the entertainment industry, architecture awards have a very nebulous timeframe, appearing in a consistently intermittent fashion, like rain showers in the Pacific Northwest. The AIA awards, the RIBA prizes, the Pritzker, the Driehaus.  As with weather events, some are widely celebrated, others just a short pause on the newsfeed scroll.

For most practicing architects, a prize has symbolic relevance, but a fleeting impact on day-to-day decision-making. There’s no shortage of reflection about specific winners and losers—there are parades of (often worthwhile) discussion in the architectural press when upper-echelon prizes are announced—but it seems we take the existence of such awards for granted. Is it time for the field to look up and ask: do architectural awards matter? And if so, could they do something to matter more?......Continue Reading

Top image: Alejandro Aravena is taking Pritzker Prize Medal, courtesy of ©The Hyatt Foundation / The Pritzker

> via Common Edge