Architectural Competitions – Experience from Finland

Designing appropriate architectural structures or planning desirable urban environments as well as inventing methods and processes to bring about new ideas require a collective competence, assurance, consensus and acceptance. It needs a shared consistency, participation, confidence and ability to better reframe the often ‘wicked’ design problems and suitable solutions in/for the continuously changing societies. Throughout the history, design competition has been deployed as a reliable and acquiescent system for assuring quality and as an efficient instrument for evaluation of the best design solutions.

The aim of this study is to develop knowledge on architectural competition in Finland. Architectural competition has been carried out in Finland since the end of the 19th century and it still comprises an important part of the major architectural practices of the country. The Finnish competition system is a recognized endeavour to elevating qualities and minimizing uncertainties in design processes. Every year, about 30 to 35 architectural and urban design competitions take place in Finland. Competitions are used to give partaking opportunity specially to talented young architects to express their visions, to demonstrate their professional skills and to be rewarded and endorsed publicly.

While conducting our research, we surprisingly found that very few scientific studies are made on this topic in Finland as well as in the rest of the Nordic countries. Due to this fact, the present study has the characteristics of an empiric survey derived from the first-hand information sources. It is the outcome of the investigation of architectural competitions in Finland with vital reliance on a series of meticulously conducted interviews with 7 key actors including highly qualified and experienced experts from the jury members representing clients, architect associations and competitors. In order to get a better picture of the prize-winning proposals and see if they have been implemented in reality, a special follow-up has been made on the Finnish architectural competitions held during the years 1999 and 2000. 84 percent of the competitions where implemented during this time. Further more, some similarities and differences between the competition systems in the other Nordic countries are compared and analyzed.

The study provides a new perception on how the architectural design competition in Finland is managed in practice. We are keen to answer how the targets are set up and met by jury members to pointing out a winner. We would like to argue that there are usually more than a few entries with good design solutions. The concept of ‘design quality’ has situated meanings and contents. The judging, making decision, and selection processes are strongly connected to the leading values, norms, regulations, organisations and traditions. And, when design and quality are two culturally and contextually bond concepts they often appear to be complicated, incoherent and remain open to various interpretations. However, while the main role of the jury is to agree upon the most appropriate proposal, it finally succeeds to distinguish the best entry based on collective agreement gained through the cumulated tacit knowledge and well-trained eyes of professionals. We would therefore argue that competence and consensus are two essential factors that make jury members to feel confident in their final choice of a winner.