ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of architectural competitions in contemporary, and often global, planning and design procedures. It highlights two selected geographical logics for how competitions and architecture are reciprocally and constitutively linked. Each reveals something about how instructions, rules and standards are used in competition procedures; how they are respected and adapted, as well as sometimes misused. The first geographical logic is how architectural competitions structure their field of participants, a part of which entails managing the interface between international market regulations and local labour markets. The second geographical logic relates to how the competition operates as a place of knowledge production. It is attentive to the spatial environment that jury boards use to take their decisions. The architectural competition enjoys the highest confidence and is praised, very often without further scrutiny, as the ideal condition of a design procedure. The chapter discusses the ephemeral character and non-traceability of decisions made in architectural competitions.
