(forthcoming)

We suggest that in research on competition procedures we 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 fields of society such as politics, aesthetics, law, economy, science – so communication between those fields must be established by some kinds of couplings; and design competitions constitute such punctual platforms for communication.
The project comperes the instrument of design competitions with instruments from participative planning / civic engagement. Empirically it will review two recent cases in the city of Zurich.