Design Competitions - A Procedural Analysis

The project starts from the recognition that the field of research on design competitions is in need of systematic research that focuses on procedural aspects of contemporary competitions, and is based on an adequate theoretical and philosophical foundation. We view design compe-titions as significant decision-making procedures towards the built environment, which shape alternative urban futures, and act as ‘sorting machines’ for those futures.

We suggest that research on competition procedures must consider specific characteristics of processes. In competitions, various levels of communication and technologies of representation are intertwining: images, text, models, and spoken discourse. Furthermore, following Kohoutek (2005), there are no direct bridges between diverse realms of society such as politics, aesthetics, law, economy, science – thus communication between those fields must be established by some kinds of couplings; and design competitions constitute such platforms for communica-tion. From this we conclude that we need adequate concepts in order to deal with the men-tioned properties: whereas the intertwining of technologies of representation in competitions decision-making can be referred to actant-networks (Latour), we conceptualise the competition as a platform for communication with the notion of ’folding’. The project will be based on a theory of social complexity (Assemblage Theory, ANT, Deleuze).

The project’s systematic inquiry into contemporary competition processes will be organised in three tracks which also define the two PhD projects. The Project combines (1) a survey of com-petitions in order to trace the topology of sets of problems, procedures, networks, and solutions (PhD 1); (2) (participatory) in-depth analysis of ongoing competitions in order to analyse the folding of diverse fields in design competitions as they evolve (PhD 2); and (3) focused concep-tual and methodical development which aims at further developing ‘tracing’ and ‘mapping’ of assemblages (Post-doc reseacher).