Design Awards: What the pros picked...

Yesterday the four additional awards we handed out to projects by local architects as part of the 2008 AIA Spokane Design Awards.  While our polls were a simple popular vote contest, theirs have three distinct levels a project can be awarded:  Citation (lowest); Merit (middle); Honor (highest).  They can also choose not to award anything.

The results are below:

• Citation - Walla Walla Community College Health Science and Performing Arts Facility
• Merit - The Fox Theater - NAC Architecture
• Merit - The Chapel of the three companions - Integrus Architecture
• Merit - William A. Grant Water & Environmental Center - ALSC Architects

One interesting observation is that only one of final four from the People's Choice Award made their list (The Fox).  Absent were the Kennedy Apartments, Ferris High School, and of course our winner - The Hospice House.  Any thoughts on what conclusions can be drawn from this?

All of the boards are currently at the IDI @ WSU Spokane.  They will be there till mid October at which point they will move to River Park Square for a month or so.

Comments

[Silent Bahb]

Conclusions? How about the further evidence of the disconnect between what the architects think is aesthetically pleasing and what the general population thinks. Whoever it was that said, "It's art because we say it's art," may not have only been talking about sculpture and paintings.

[jonp]

Perhaps this disconnect has more to do with education than taste. Those in the design profession in this part of the world, especially those who partake in activities such as jurying an AIA competition, all have what i would refer to as a classic modernist education.

We tend to have similar design "taste" because that is what has been drilled into us over five years of academic study plus our experience in the field. In school we labored under a platonic idealism that drove us to attempt to derive the perfect solution to a problem, even though this perfection lies always outside of our grasp. Our historical studies tended to focus on “western” architecture, with an emphasis on the design and philosophical movements of early 20th century Europe.

While we have these layers in which to discriminate what could be called aesthetically pleasing, or even a good solution, the majority of the population does not. Very few schools teach basic art, much less aesthetics. Why should we expect the trained professional eye to see what the eyes of those who may not have any context in which to understand why the submissions respond to their problem they way they do to come up with the same picks? Have we become irrelevant by residing in ivory towers separated from those we have been called to serve, or are we merely privileged to have been able to study such a remarkable thing?

[Silent Bahb]

Is the novel a good novel because it is fun to read and engages the psyche? Or is it a good novel because it builds upon a stylistic paradigm set on its way by some obscure author only literature majors have ever heard about? Or put another way, would "For Whom the Bell Tolls" still be considered a good book if no one had heard of Ernest Hemingway?

Same questions as yours, Jon.