To win a contract, win a contest

New GSD class probes age-old question of how to triumph in an architectural design competition

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Donald Stastny (left), one of the country's leading design competition advisers, addressed students in GSD Professor Jerold Kayden's class, which focuses on the reality and ubiquity of design competitions

If anything oils the wheels of architecture and planning, it is the design competition. Such competitions “are in the DNA of the design world,” said Jerold Kayden, the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD).

In practice, architects and planners face an “even insatiable” pool of contests, he said, which gobble time and resources with no guarantee of remuneration. “Competitions are going to be an increasing part of architectural work lives, for better or for worse.”

This semester, Kayden addressed the reality and ubiquity of design competitions by teaching a course about them, PRO-07417. One April guest presenter for the seminar, Oregon architect Donald J. Stastny, said that it was the first such class he had heard of in three decades of advising. (He is a veteran of 62 competitions, from Beverly Hills to Berlin.)

The final projects for Kayden’s dozen or so students in “Design Competitions” revealed a questioning and critical thread that echoed the semester’s readings and discussions. Though design competitions for buildings, parks, bridges, and even industrial products, like furniture, are increasingly common, are they fair? Do they improve design quality, creativity, or business outcomes? And, in the end, who owns the designs?

A paper by GSD urban design student Orcun Tonyali proposed a set of rules that would apply worldwide to design competitions. Architecture student Zhanina Boyadzhieva proposed boosting ethical standards for competitions, and bringing the public into collaborations more often. Doctor of design student Vaughn Horn outlined a memorials competition for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Architecture student Carly Augustine analyzed a riverfront parks competition at the site of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

The concept of such competitions dates back at least to 447 B.C.E., when workers on a rocky hilltop in Greece began to assemble the Acropolis. Since then, formal competitions have inspired some of the world’s most iconic built spaces, including the dome of the Florence Cathedral (a 1419 competition), the Spanish Steps in Rome (1717), the Houses of Parliament in London (1835), and the dramatic seaside Sydney Opera House (1955).

In the United States, rules for design competitions date to the Civil War era. But their complexity is very modern. Some are by invitation only. Some ask for designs, and others for concepts. Some competitions result in completed projects, while others — including many student competitions — simply gather ideas...Continue Reading

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