Title: Jury sessions as non-trivial machines: a procedural analysis

Authors: Jan Silberberger

Addresses: Department of Geosciences, Geography Unit, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 4, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland

Abstract: The paper at hand provides a procedural analysis of Swiss architectural competitions against the background of complexity theory. In its analysis, this paper focuses on the instrument of the honourable mention. This instrument provides the competition jury with the opportunity to honour outstanding entries that were initially excluded from the awarding of prizes because of critical violations of terms specified in the competition brief. By applying the concept of the non-trivial machine to findings from an ethnographic study on the jury boards of four architectural competitions in Switzerland, this paper describes the honourable mention as an integral part of the competition procedure. This integral part enables the jury to profoundly scrutinise and challenge the assumptions on which the competition brief is based. That is, it allows for the adaption of the competition's solution space according to insights gained through the jury's interaction with the entries.

Keywords: architectural competitions; procedural analysis; jury sessions; honourable mention; non-trivial machine; NTM; ethnography; actor-network theory; ANT; Switzerland; complexity theory; competition juries.

DOI: 10.1504/JDR.2012.051163

Journal of Design Research, 2012 Vol.10 No.4, pp.258 - 268

Received: 09 Aug 2011
Accepted: 24 Feb 2012

Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

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