Architecture Competitions as Pedagogical Tools

Bridging the Unit and the Office

Abstract

Architecture competitions are considered an essential part of the profession. But when entering the realm of pedagogy, can competitions be understood and used as tools to expand architectural practice and intertwine its professional and pedagogical strands? In this article I question and examine the sites of knowledge production that bridge the gap between academic and professional practice, and explore the idea that architecture competitions can become tools for interconnecting the traditionally separated ways of producing architecture.

I explore a case study in which a pedagogical unit and a professional architecture office come together by using professional architecture competitions as pedagogical tools. Following the first ten years of Elia Zenghelis’s simultaneous pedagogical and professional practice at the Architectural Association’s Diploma Unit 9 and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, I trace the original premises and the outcomes of this fruitful relationship. Four architecture competitions that were part of both the academic exercises of the Unit and the professional practice of the Office are explored in detail using archival documents from the Architectural Association. Examining the shifting nature of roles, viewpoints and ideas in this historical account, the professional mechanism of architecture competitions is seen as a crucial tool for collective knowledge production in the space of architecture education, and vice versa.

This essay explores a case study in which a pedagogical Unit and a professional architecture Office come together by using professional architecture competitions as pedagogical tools. Following the first ten years of simultaneous architecture pedagogical and professional practice of Elia Zenghelis at the Architectural Association’s Diploma Unit 9 and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, this article traces original premises and the outcomes of this fruitful relationship. Four architecture competitions that were part of both the academic exercises of the Unit and the professional practice of the Office are explored in detail using archival documents from the Architectural Association. Examining the shifting nature of roles, viewpoints and ideas in this historical account, the professional mechanism of architecture competitions is seen as a crucial tool for collective knowledge production in the space of architecture education, and vice versa.