In this file, we take up in full the fascinating study carried out by the editorial staff of TEC21 based on data accumulated by our colleagues at espazium who have managed and powered the very popular competitions.espazium.ch platform for around ten years now. They called on the company keeValue and its data analysis experts to bring together nearly 2,000 procedures, then deliver these results to our visualization specialist, Valérie Bovay. Finally, around ten actors and actresses from the competition were invited to react to these graphics.
This patient process was necessary to learn lessons and above all break certain clichés. We first learn that no, the competition is not losing momentum, but that the number of procedures is rather growing throughout Switzerland. We then learn that open competition is favored in the Latin cantons. We even discover that the competitive culture is not necessarily more important in the canton of Zurich if we compare the number of procedures to the number of inhabitants. In terms of quality, we can get an idea by visiting the exhibition currently on display at ZAZ Bellerive, which presents 104 results from competitions organized in this canton over the past two years.
We extended this investigation by asking Véronique Biau to comment on the situation on a European scale. The French researcher, one of the rare people who has an overview of competitions across the continent, paints a little-known and very instructive picture, presenting great disparities. It also provides some lessons on other competitive bidding practices, from which Swiss architects could learn, such as Vision presentation Dutch, the French Innovative Urban Project Calls (APUI, including “Reinventing Paris”. Read the article Reinventing Paris: urban marketing or real projects?), or the draws practiced in Germany in selective competitions.
This analytical work focuses on numbers. However, to continue to enforce and develop competition methods, it is necessary to delve into the details. According to the sectoral study of the Council of Architects of Europe (ACE/CAE), the number of hours invested annually in competitions varies greatly in Europe, and it would reach almost 2000 in Belgium. As the Swiss architects were not able to respond to the study (due to lack of time, perhaps?), we cannot estimate their situation. How many hours were invested to create the ZAZ exhibition?
In this context, it is always good to recall the absolutely exceptional commitment that the profession delivers to society, without guarantee of being rewarded, or even paid. And to remember what the SIA has been asking for 150 years: fair play. No statistics allow us to distinguish between properly organized competitions and those which increasingly take the form of disguised calls for tenders with the aim of obtaining a (compact) preliminary project at lower cost: the notebooks of The charges are sometimes so precise, the specialists ever more numerous and the requirements so great that only the economics of the project can make the difference. The competition must remain an architectural competition.
