The Rise of Awards in Architecture

Jean-Pierre Chupin · Carmela Cucuzzella · Georges Adamczyk

Sep 2022 · Vernon Press

About this ebook

This book is the first scientific study to focus on awards in architecture and the built environment investigating their exponential growth since the 1980s. The celebration of excellence in architecture and related fields remains a phenomenon on which there is strangely little scientific scrutiny. What is to be understood from the plethora of award-winning projects, award-winning buildings and awarded professional practices in the built environment, year after year? Glossy images partake in an intense ballet at every local, regional, national or international award ceremony and they are meant to embody proofs of architectural excellence. However, it is necessary to take a critical distance to question what awards are meant to embody, symbolize, and perhaps measure.

Each of the 10 chapters in this volume is centered on one question related to themes as varied as the comparison of Pritzker and Nobel Prizes, the Prix de Rome, the redefinition of quality through awards, green awards and sustainability, the multiplication of sustainable awards, heritage awards, architecture book awards, the awarding of school architecture, awards as mediations and awards as pedagogical devices. Many fields, once consolidated, have featured a sharp increase in related prizes. The original data, compiled and summarized in 4 appendices cover more than 150 award-granting organizations in some 30 countries. Our inventory includes upwards of 24,000 prizes awarded at more than 3,100 events, the earliest of which is the first instance of Western architecture’s seminal Grand Prix de Rome in France in 1720. A history of contemporary architecture is thus written through press releases that praise the merits of the heroes as much as their works and achievements. And while awards can be vehicles that propel architecture forward, they can also be Trojan horses in an era that is constantly on the lookout for event-driven products, small and big news, and brand imaging.  

About the author

Jean-Pierre Chupin holds the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence at Université de Montréal. An expert on architecture competitions and awards, he is the chief editor of two online databases of projects and buildings: the Canadian Competitions Catalogue and the Atlas of Research on Exemplarity in Architecture and the Built Environment.

Carmela Cucuzzella holds the Concordia University Research Chair in ‘Integrated Design And Sustainability for the Built Environment’. She is the founding co-director of the ‘Next Generation Cities Institute’. In 2020, she published ‘Analyzing Eco-architecture Beyond Performance’ and co-edited with Dr. Sherif Goubran, ‘Sustainable Architecture between Measurement and Meaning.’

Georges Adamczyk is professor at the School of Architecture of the Université de Montréal which he directed from 1999 to 2007. He is an associate researcher to the ‘Laboratoire d'étude de l'architecture potentielle’ (LEAP).