Measuring Design Excellence

At the 2005 AIA Chicago Design Excellence Awards Friday night, one name stood out more than Brininstool + Lynch, David Hovey, Krueck + Sexton, Perkins + Will, and John Ronan (all multiple winners that night): photographers Hedrich Blessing. As each winning project was displayed on the projection screen at the end of the ballroom, The 75-year old Chicago institution's name accompanied most of the slides, right below the name of the architect. This says two things: most Chicago architects come to Hedrich Blessing for the documentation of the final product, and architectural photography is an important element in the deciding of architectural prizes.

Focusing on the second, photographs are usually required for this sort of prize, given the fact that each jury member could not possibly visit every building submitted. In the case of AIA Chicago, all projects are by local architects but the buildings themselves can be anywhere. While a dream jury might be flown to every submission wherever it may be, the money doesn't exist for such an endeavor. So color-saturated photographs, usually devoid of any human presence, are used to persuade the jury that what they're looking at is a winner.

For the sake of comparison, let's look at one winning building -- the Perspectives Charter School by Perkins + Will -- with an image by a professional photographer and one by yours truly.


Image by Steinkamp/Ballogg Photography


Image by me

Many things are apparent here:

:: The professional composition is more dynamic, especially in terms of the canopy, whose tip appears angle liked the prow of a ship. Definitely this is achieved by the choice of lens, though notice how each image is roughly the same from the angled line in the double-height glass area to the left.

:: The professional shot involves the context more, setting the school apart from its surroundings.

:: The otherwise gray exterior takes on a dramatic purple glow in the dusk-time professional shot, though I don't know if it's a natural, on location effect or an effect achieved in the processing.

:: The choice for a dusk-time shot also helps add some vibrancy to the shot, whose glass reflections add to the grayness in my shot.

Does this mean that if the jury only saw my photographs they wouldn't have given it an award? Without knowing for sure, I'd say it's a possibility. Let's say that were the case, what does it say about architecture awards? How does a jury judge a building if not by photographs?

In this case, the awards focus on members of the local AIA Chapter who are responsible for submitting works for consideration. The awards give recognition to those members doing quality work. If those awards are highly influenced by imagery over substance or experience, it lessens the meaning of them.

On the other hand, the Mies van der Rohe Awards for European Union and Latin American Architecture varies in a few ways. Selected "experts" choose the projects for consideration. A jury then selects finalists (around 30), after which they visit as many as possible before making their choices for awarded work and special mention. Extensive documentation is required at each level, including not only photographs but also initial sketches, a complete set of drawings, and explanatory text. Given the responsibilities of the jury, both in dissecting each entry's documentation and visiting the projects, and the biannual nature of the prize, naturally this award carries more weight than the AIA Chicago award.