Raymond Moriyama and the RAIC have created a new prize for architecture - $100K awarded every two years for buildings that "reflect the values that are so important to Raymond: humanism, equality, and inclusivity." You can read more about it here.
I can appreciate why Moriyama and the RAIC think this will raise the profile of Canadian architecture (presuming a Canadian wins at some point) but it remains to be seen whether or not it is a good idea. Moriyama is of a very particular era, speaking only of his work as an architect. After WWII people genuinely believed architecture could play a significant role in social change and they were right. The war had destroyed whole cities in Europe and Asia and there was a tremendous "peace dividend" in North America, where everyone "knew" real estate was the only truly safe investment. Architects had the opportunity not only to employ new technologies on a large scale for the first time but they could also step in a create entire cities from scratch. The entire world was being rebuilt and architects had enormous social power.
Our circumstances have changed. Not even architects believe architecture is as powerful now as it was 50 years ago. What this award is likely to do is bring international attention to one very good building every two years and, while that isn't bad it doesn't really qualify as good either. I talked about this before in my spiel on niceness in architecture but award winning buildings are important to only a tiny minority of people. Architects themselves, architecture students, people who write about design. Hard to think of anyone else. The important buildings are different for everyone and about the only thing they have in common is no one pays any attention to them. And you can be absolutely certain no one wins $100K for them.
This award will be meaningful or not depending on who wins and why. It is a near certainty that none of the winners will actually need $100K. In that sense it is kind of stupid but I guess if it was only $20 the media would pay even less attention to it than they will now. If this award goes to the kind of building I think it is going to go to (the best example of the work of one of maybe ten or fifteen firms world-wide) then it will be meaningless. Or at least as bad as the Pritzker. It would be a different thing entirely to give $100K to a firm that was just starting out and could use the money. Or to split it into 10 prizes in different categories. Or to award it retrospectively to buildings that are not less than, say, ten years old. It's very difficult to tell how well a building will age and, given that this award is about quality in construction and "not a beauty contest", it seems like waiting to see if how the building ages might be a good idea. It would be embarrassing as hell to give the award to a building that fell apart six months later.
Having chosen the Aga Khan Museum as the site of the award ceremony does give me a tiny bit of hope the prize will be something more than an architects-only circle-jerk. The Aga Khan awards are about the only genuinely interesting architecture contest going. The jury consistently finds work that provides the architects of the world with bucketloads of details to steal (and is even more valuable for the world's architecture students). The work recognized by the Aga Khan is typically cheap, interesting, and innovative as hell. Part of that is because they recognize so many buildings. One building every two years just doesn't seem like enough. Another point in favour of the Aga Khan's is the buildings are from parts of the world The Architecture Record and Architecture Review don't visit very often. We'll see. If this turns into another occasion to celebrate the same office everyone else is celebrating that year, Moriyama wasted his money. If one of my friends wins, it will instantly become the best award since Alfred Nobel started blowing shit up.
No comments:
Post a Comment