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Typically an organization will take a few days to pick a winner. Eyebeam,
after meeting with the finalists in October, took five months.
And though Johnson finally selected Diller + Scofidio, it wasn't
necessarily in order to build their scheme. Rather Eyebeam launched a research
project, during which groups representing a range of cultural and artistic
disciplines will analyze the building's challenges. Diller + Scofidio
are helping Johnson design the process and will produce sketches based on
what comes out of it. If the road leads back to their scheme, fine.
But they might have to start from scratch. After 19 months--back to the
drawing board?
When I met with Johnson again--nearly a year after our first interview--he
admitted that choosing a design was agonizing: "We were torn into three
pieces." The problem, he and his team finally realized, was that
the new-media landscape had evolved so much over the competition's many
months that Eyebeam's original objectives had been largely eclipsed. "When
we started, the idea of artists using technology was heretical, and now
that's come to pass," Johnson explains. "So our organization had
to look at our mission in a larger time scale."
Johnson describes Eyebeam's revised mandate as "Cultural R&D: working
at the intersection of art and science, and looking at artistic and scientific
acts as cultural acts." The trouble was that the competition brief
was so specific, it encouraged designs that could not accommodate Eyebeam's
new direction. "So we needed to start at first principles,"
Johnson says.
When I heard this, I confess, I found it incredible. Surely Johnson knew
better than anyone that new media is ever-changing. Why had he not--for
example--structured a less particular ideas-based competition, eliminated
the final stage, and chosen an architect from the original thirteen?
"I'm not sure we would have uncovered what we uncovered with something
looser," Johnson replies. "The focus and energy of this competition
brought important issues into relief." Pointing out that Eyebeam did
extensive research before beginning, he adds, "My experience of programs
is that they change all the time. The difference is that we're trying to
be as thoughtful about it as possible."
Fair enough. But I sensed that Johnson saw the competition as much as an
investigation into the relationship between architecture and new media (i.e.,
a research project) as a means of picking an architect, often to the participants'
detriment. One of the biggest complaints about competitions is the inadequacy
of compensation: for an honorarium of $7,000, Eyebeam's semifinalists
produced work valued by at least one participant in the hundreds of thousands
of dollars. (Finalists received an additional $35,000 to develop their schemes.)
Given the burden this places on a practice, isn't it incumbent upon an organization
to be very careful about what it demands?
"The way we hope we've compensated them is with a very public venue
for their ideas," Hotson says, and though this sounds self-serving,
there's no better proof of it than the Tribune competition, which was partly
a stunt to exploit the paper's 75th birthday. And though they complained
about its length, most of the architects with whom I spoke remained bullish
about Eyebeam's endeavor. The low money/high workload equation they described
as typical, and even the prospect of starting over, first publicly
raised by Johnson last December, was understood to be a necessity of getting
it right. "It seemed an applicable method," MVRDV's Winy Maas
says, "that before choosing the ultimate direction, the client uses
the architect to reveal what he or she is really thinking." If much
is offered, it would seem, much may be asked.
For all its distinction, the Tribune competition is perhaps most famous
for its disappointing outcome: the judges--four Tribune editors and
an AIA architect--chose a regressive neo-Gothic scheme by John Mead Howells
and Raymond Hood. This suggests a competition's final essential: a
good jury. The problem is that these can be snake pits of competing agendas,
with predictable results: "First prize goes to the one scheme that
everyone will grudgingly support," Newick says.
Not this time. Johnson, though heavily advised, had the only vote. And though
he couldn't explain precisely what tipped the scales, he remains unambiguous
in his enthusiasm for Diller + Scofidio's design, commitment, and inspiration.
If there is a drawback to having a single personality running the show,
it's perhaps that the result--as with a standard commission--reflects
that individual's strengths and weaknesses equally. A more fearful client
might have hedged his selection bets, and missed an opportunity. Conversely
a less research-minded client might have designed a process that produced
greater variety. A measure of enforced conflict--that is, decentralized
power--might well be healthy.
Still, as Terence Riley observes, "There are as many competitions as
there are situations." On balance, Johnson's effort served Eyebeam--and
architecture--very well. As for competitions themselves, their value apparently
lies in their risk, in which remains the marrow of all possibility. "It
was a crazy competition, and parting with our original design, if we have
to, will be painful," Diller says. "On the other hand, this is
an incredible opportunity to do a piece of architecture for a progressive
institution. It's something new, and I'm much more tolerant because someone's
going out to the edge of the cliff on this, and," she laughs, "I'll
go out there with him."
But will Johnson jump? "Absolutely," he says, invoking the ultimate
arbiter of a competition's success or failure: a built reality. Or as Hani
Rashid puts it, "The proof is in the pudding."
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