Emerging architecture

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 2002 by Peter Davey

This year's entries for the ar d awards showed a huge range of invention and ideas from all over the world. Here and on the following pages, Peter Davey, AR Editor and Chairman of the Jury, explains the scope of the awards and the jury's judgements.

This is the fourth annual cycle of the ar d awards. They were conceived by the partnership of The Architectural Review and d line, the distinguished Danish architectural design firm, to discover and celebrate the work of architects and designers not necessarily well known and usually at the start of independent careers. This year, we are most grateful to be sponsored by Buro Happold, the international consulting engineers, who have enabled us to extend the awards and their associated activities in several directions.

The awards are given only for built or manufactured work. However fascinating, theoretical projects do not yet make impact on humanity and the planet, though of course they may in future. We set the age limit of entrants at 45 because, in many countries, architects and other designers do not have an opportunity to execute their own distinctive work before that age. Of course, there are exceptions. For instance, we were astonished to find that Christoph Ingenhoven, who was an ar d juror in 2000, was eligible to enter (p56) - from the quantity and quality of the work of his office, we had assumed that he had become ineligible some years ago. So too with Jim Eyre of Wilkinson Eyre, who has designed the magnificent bridge at Gateshead (p58).

The over 700 entries this year ranged from landscapes to tableware, temporary installations to churches. Entries came from some 60 countries and cultures, as different as Senegal and Slovenia, Colombia and Canada.'

The jury for this occasion was international and distinguished. Members were Stefan Behnisch (Germany), Margret Hardardottir (Iceland), Rick Joy (USA), Carme Pinos (Spain) and Hin L. Tan (Malaysia). All have established themselves as distinguished practitioners, and all are around the qualifying age for entrants. As Editor of the AR, I, a non-practising architect, was chairman.

We worked harmoniously together, fascinated by the wealth of invention before us. Most of our choices were of quite small works - not surprising perhaps, as in the majority of cases they are the early works of a practice, and it is rare for such things to be big. In the end, we chose five award [winners.sup.2] and selected a further 21 schemes for commendation. They show the great range of types of design before the jury.

One of the most pernicious false dichotomies in our trade is the Loosian notion that we can only build urns or chamber pots, a proposition elaborated by my revered predecessor Nikolaus Pevsner's dictum that cathedrals can be architecture, but bicycle sheds are building. (3)

It is absurd to suppose that architecture should be restricted to monuments. Good design should permeate and ennoble all our lives, from our most exalted moments to the most everyday. I do not mean by this that we should (or can) live in a world ruled by some sort of taste code, but that all the things we make should be carefully made for purpose, agreeable to use and decent to look at. Further, they should minimize our impact on the planet and its resources. They should help enhance the quality of human life. In their very different ways, the award winning and highly commended entries have these attributes, and they show the range of the ar d awards.

Domestic

Houses are traditionally one of the chief springboards for an independent architectural career. The house by Sean Godsell in Victoria (p38) is an extremely thoughtful response to climate and landscape that raises fascinating questions about the nature of modern Australian culture poised between Western and Eastern influences.

There could be no greater contrast than between the experimental dwelling in Addis Ababa by Ahadu Abaineh (p60) and the small house in Tokyo by Yumi Kori and Toshiya Endo (p62). Yet both respond to local resources, need and culture, with the Ethiopian one using growing trees as the main bearing element, and the Japanese house forming a marvellous compressed sequence of internal and external spaces on a very tight site. In this group might be included Marlon Blackwell's Honey House in North Carolina (p48). Though not a house, it has domestic scale and shows great imagination in construction and realizing the potential of a very small building and its relationship to landscape.

Archipro's cemetery for the unknown dead of a country village (p42) is the most powerful expression of the very impressive modern Japanese sensitivity for landscape, which has been celebrated by ar d awards in earlier years. It is a moving and abstracted meditation on nature, death and community. At the opposite end of the landscape scale is the garden and contemplation house in Malacca by SCDA (p84), where history and nature are also interpreted, but in a very private way. The dining hall at Moorelands Camp in Ontario by Shim-Sutcliffe (p80) is also a place for meditation on nature: but by children in the wilderness. A much more gentle landscape was celebrated with great panache by graduating students in ephemeral parasols for a festival at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts (p98).