in brief

The news section presents architectural competitions and other events held at the House of Architects in Irkutsk, as well as the latest news related to Siberian architecture.

How daylight representation in architectural competitions images can lead to an erroneous interpretation of projects

The digital world we are living in today offers viewers an experience of buildings before they even exist. This experience is no longer just geometric or descriptive, but also sensory. It generates emotions through fixed or animated images of 3 dimensional objects inserted in an urban context. These images are produced by specialized agencies with specific tools allowing them to generate visual artefacts with a striking impression of realism. The light that bathes these scenes is carefully worked out in order to capture our gaze. We believe that, in some cases, this may generate errors of appreciation and that these representations can lead to questionable choices when they are used in architectural competitions. This paper proposes some keys to analyse these sublimated images and aims to give the reader the possibility to interpret architectural projects in a more realistic way.

COPYRIGHT FOR THE PROJECT IN ARCHITECTURAL COMPETITIONS

Problem statement. Works of architecture, as objects of copyright, is one of the key industries on which the economies of the countries of the modern world are based. The importance of architectural activity for the harmonious development of society is unquestioning, both from the point of view of the development of projects and the creation of structures, the cultural value of which is of a spiritual nature, and due to the functional value of architecture, includes aesthetic, social and everyday components. Copyright in architectural works is an important form of protecting and enforcing the rights of architects and neglect of this right usually leads to litigation. There is a problem of awareness of copyright issues in Ukraine, both in architectural projects and in many aspects of architectural activities, in particular, the observance of the copyright of architects when their architectural projects participate in architectural competitions. The main objective. Research of architectural works submitted to competitions as objects of intellectual property rights, study and generalization of existing rules of participation of architectural projects in architectural competitions, legality of their use by competition customers and observance of copyrights of architects, including students and masters of architecture. Conclusions. The participation of architects in architectural competitions is an extremely important issue due to the copyright of both experienced and young architects, especially if the participants in the competition are students of architectural and construction universities. The complex of copyright on the result of his creative activity in the field of architecture arises from the moment of creation of the work (including the project), regardless of whether it was completed and published or not. After the implementation of the project, the author's rights to constructed buildings, structures and other works as objects of copyright also belong to the author, if they were not transferred under the contract, as well as taking into account the law on rights to objects created by the employment contract and to order. The copyright for the project belongs exclusively to the author (authors) and is protected in accordance with the Laws of Ukraine. As we can see, the judicial and legislative systems of Ukraine allow an architect (or other copyright owner) to protect his project and rights to it, to punish those who encroach on someone else's intellectual property and to bring violators to justice. Legal protection is equal for all participants of the competition and can help young architects not only to gain experience in project development, at different stages of the competition, but also in case of victory, to further participate in its implementation, subject to compliance with the rules and conditions.

An Evaluation of Measuring the Publicness Level of Interiors in Public Building Design

This study examines the publicness level of the interior spaces of public buildings. As a method, VGA (visual graph analysis) is used for analyzing the early design phases of selected municipal service buildings. In this study, the authors utilized from VGA for quantifying the publicness level of the two selected architectural competitions of municipality buildings. The method allows us analyzing the floor plans of each project in obtaining an eventual assessment of permeability and accessibility which give an idea of the levels of publicness comparatively. Subsequently, representation parameters are compared under two main criteria: connectivity and integration. The aim of the study is to understand the level of publicness and efficiency of spatial settings for the users circulating in the public buildings, which have dissimilar plan schemes. This method would be used by the designers for early design stage and provide useful feedback for understanding the level of accessibility and permeability of the structures and adjust their schemes accordingly.

A Modernist Memorial for a Classical City: Designs for the Memorial to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad as Seen by Architects and Audience

The article discusses practices of architectural commemoration of the most tragic event in the history of St. Petersburg — Leningrad, the siege. Architects started producing projects for the future memorials in the first months of the unprecedented blockade of the city. During the postwar period some impressive monuments were erected, including one at the Piskarevskoe Memorial Cemetery. There were also dozens of designs submitted to several architectural competitions during the 1950–60s. In the 1960s, Leningrad went through two open architectural competitions for the memorial dedicated to the defenders of the city in the Second World War. The designs were widely publicized, provoking public response going far beyond Soviet standards of freedom of expression in discussing the tragic past. Building on a considerable body of archival materials, the article examines the history of the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad and the shaping of its architectural language. Simultaneously, it analyzes some commonalities of “memorial discourse” reflected in feedback texts. The critical responses demonstrate various attitudes towards the contemporary (late modern) architectural characteristic of the majority of competition entries and various visions of its appropriateness for the commemoration of the Siege. Eventually erected in 1975, the monument turned out to be a compromise between the architects’ and laymen’s visions, between the highly modernist style fashioned by the architects and the expectations of the audience that was skeptical about “Western modernism” and “abstraction” and demanded a narrative memorial with figurative sculpture.

Structuring architectural competitions as a competitive procurement process

PurposeArchitectural competitions have been in existence for over 2,500 years. Past studies on this have focussed on the architectural aspects, competition formats, design evaluation by jury members and its evolution. However, no comprehensive research has examined the way that architectural competitions can be structured as a competitive procurement process for contractual outcomes. This paper addresses that gap by examining the way in which a two-stage proposal procedure (as defined by ISO 10845) was used to convert the architectural ideas competition for two new universities in South Africa (SPU and UMP) into a public procurement process with contractual outcomes.Design/methodology/approachA case study was designed to examine (1) the procurement and contractual aspects of the two-stage proposal procedure within a public procurement context; (2) the challenges encountered in implementing the procurement procedure adopted; and (3) the outcomes of the procurement process. In total, 16 documents relating to the architectural competition were examined, using document analysis, to obtain insights into the procurement approach and processes. This was followed by in-depth interviews with the competition administrators to identify the key challenges encountered in implementing the procurement procedure. A content analysis method was used to analyse the qualitative data.FindingsOnly 40% of architects who expressed interest made submissions in the first stage. Those admitted to the second stage associated themselves with architectural practices and submitted tender offers which were evaluated on the basis of their financial offer, preference and quality. Most participants experienced difficulty with the procurement procedure due to unfamiliarity with the process and tight timescales. However, necessary clarifications provided by the client's team enabled them to respond appropriately and the procurement procedure proved effective for procuring innovative design ideas from nine talented architects. They were all based in small to medium-sized firms rather than large firms.Originality/valueThis paper fills an important gap in current understanding of how architectural competitions may be alternatively structured into a competitive procurement process, using empirical evidence from two architectural competitions. Architectural competitions have traditionally been used and characterized in the research literature primarily as an ideas competition rather than a competitive procurement process. This paper, therefore, extends current knowledge on the traditional way architectural competitions are generally used in practice and demonstrates through examination of two case studies how architectural competitions may be further extended and utilized as a competitive procurement process rather than just a process for obtaining ideas.

The Performance Complex

What’s valuable? Market competition provides one kind of answer. Competitions offer another. On one side, competition is an ongoing and seemingly endless process of pricings; on the other, competitions are discrete and bounded in time and location, with entry rules, judges, scores, and prizes. This book examines what happens when ever more activities in domains of everyday life are evaluated and experienced in terms of performance metrics. Unlike organized competitions, such systems are ceaseless and without formal entry. Instead of producing resolutions, their scorings create addictions. To understand these developments, this book explores discrete contests (architectural competitions, international music competitions, and world press photo competitions); shows how the continuous updating of rankings is both a device for navigating the social world and an engine of anxiety; and examines the production of such anxiety in settings ranging from the pedagogy of performance in business schools to struggling musicians coping with new performance metrics in online platforms. In the performance society, networks of observation—in which all are performing and keeping score—are entangled with a system of emotionally charged preoccupations with one’s positioning within the rankings. From the bedroom to the boardroom, pharmaceutical companies and management consultants promise enhanced performance. This assemblage of metrics, networks, and their attendant emotional pathologies is herein regarded as the performance complex.

ROMANTIC TRENDS IN ARCHITECTURAL COMPETITION OF THE DON REGION OF THE LATE XIX – EARLY XX CENTURY

The article is devoted to the study of architectural competition practice on the territory of the Don region during the heyday of romantic trends in Russian architecture of the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries. This period was a time of rapid industrial and economic development of the cities of the Lower Don and the Sea of Azov, such as Rostov-on-don and Taganrog. A sharp increase in residents, their well-being and the expansion of the style of regional architecture contributed to the activation of construction. The examples of some of the competition entries are studied in the article. The problem of this research is to identify romantic trends in the regional architectural and construction practice of the Don region of the late XIX – early XX centuries, by analyzing the competitive proposals of architects. The authors propose a new approach to the problem of forming stylistic trends in the region, where an important role is played by the architectural competition as a platform for introducing popular stylistic ideas into the public consciousness. The studied issue of the manifestation of romanticism ideas in the regional competitive architectural and construction practice allows to conclude that romantic tendencies are in project proposals presented at architectural competitions of the Don region. There is a penetration of current and popular trends of romanticism in the regional architectural and construction practice.