Design by Competition: Making Design Competition Work
2001; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 72; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1478-341X
Autores Tópico(s)Architecture, Modernity, and Design
ResumoDesign by Competition: Making Design Competition Work, Jack L. Nasar, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999,238 pp., £30.00Jack Nasar is one of America's foremost environmental psychologists and a prolific researcher in environmental aesthetics. When he brings his rational-analytic perspective on design, his robust social scientific research methodologies and unparalleled knowledge of the environmental design literature to bear on thr subject of architectural design competitions, the results are predictable, but entertaining and thought-provoking.While the subject fits comfortably within Nasar's academic interests, there appear to have been other factors at work in provoking this study. For at the heart of Design by Competition is the study of the spectacular failure of the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts at Ohio State University, Nasar's own university. This was the result of a 1982-83 design competition won by a design team headed by Peter Eisenman. Opened in 1989, the building is a vanguard ?deconstructivist' design that helped launch both the architect and his architectural approach. The university architect has described it as a building ?unrivalled for its problems', and it proved both expensive to build (three times over budget) and run. As an extreme example of an unsatisfactory competition winner, the Wexner Center provides an interesting case study that confirms every non-architect's prejudices about the realities of the design process. It is used as a focus for a wide range of research projects that collectively provide a sustained critique of competition processes generally, and positive suggestions as to how the process might be improved.The first part of the book provides background analyses of the Wexner Center competition, and an international review of architectural competitions and expert perspectives on the same. It reviews some of the highest-profile competitions since the White House in 1792, and analyses their ability to deliver architectural masterpieces (less than five per cent of the time is suggested). The author compares evaluations by architects and non-architect professionals of 50 winners and losers from American Institute of Architects competitions since 1882, and discovers that the respondents favoured the losing designs (around 55:45 per cent). These findings lead into a very useful discussion of aesthetics, a concept which Nasar prefers to replace with the concepts of meaning and appearance as more relevant to human experience (66). Here he explores the preoccupation of architects and juries with the appearance of design solutions (?the image') and explores the gap between lay (?vulgar') and professional (?skilled') tastes.The second part of the book is entitled ?Evaluations'. It begins with an excellent review of ?shared meanings ... [that] ... can serve as a basis for appearance guidelines' (75). Four emotional responses to the built environment are identified- preference, arousal, excitement, and relaxation- and six environmental preferences-moderate diversity (visual richness), coherence/order, openness (views, but defined space), naturalness, good maintenance, historic styling and features and liveable (lively/inhabited spaces). These Nasar develops into a set of criteria that he suggests could be used to judge design entries as part of a Visual Quality Programme or a ?pre-jury evaluation'. Applying this to the Wexner Center, the Eisenman design comes last, with the Arthur Erickson design scoring positively on all dimensions! …
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