Architects and designers love to receive awards. And why not" They honour the top accomplishments and best buildings of the profession, creating an occasion for celebration that is often lacking in the industry. For winners?and especially younger firms?they can bring the kind of notice that puts a new studio on the map. Awards help to confer legitimacy, proving a firm?s design abilities to existing and potential clients.
At the scale of the profession, awards are a way to communicate the value of architecture and architects in shaping the built environment. At the recent OAQ Awards ceremony, association President Pierre Corriveau underscored how the selected projects add to the public good. ?It?s exciting to see how architecture blossoms in our communities and contributes to enhancing the value and vitality of our living environments,? he said. Architectural scholar Jean-Pierre Chupin believes that awards can tell us even more?especially when you examine large sets of awarded projects. Chupin, who holds a Canada Research Chair at the Université de Mon­tréal, is leading a project (at architecture-excellence.org) to document all of the buildings that have received awards in Canada since 1967?some 3,000 projects in total.
Chupin?s interest is spurred by epistemological questions about architectural quality. ?Everyone knows what quality is about, but no one can quite explain it,? he says. For two decades, he has co-directed a project researching architectural competitio...