ABSTRACT
This introduction provides an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows how the procedure manages and sometimes struggles to stick with the architectural competition brief and regulation. It focuses on the judgement process and how it can be variously framed. The chapter discusses how competitions are orientated towards realization of the building. It describes jury work in the competition for the extension of the Kunstmuseum Basel that took place in 2009. The chapter explores how during the jury process specific projects are rejected and later reintroduced in the pool of potential candidates. It explains the case of the cooperative housing project Kalkbreite that was built from 2012 to 2014 on a brown field within the city of Zurich in Switzerland. The chapter conceptualizes the competition that was carried out to select a convenient project as a threshold that had to be passed by the people and institutions involved.
