PS19 Archive and Discourse: What Architecture Award Programs Tell Us

Since 1979, 44 architects from around the world have received the Pritzker Prize. Of those, seven hail from Japan. Although the more populous United States can boast eight Laureates to Japan’s seven, U.S. numbers include two architects who immigrated to the country, I. M. Pei and Frank Gehry--and the U.S. has nearly three times Japan’s population.

Furthermore, three of the Japanese Pritzker Laureates are notably unusual: the only Laureate who never attended college (Tadao Ando), the youngest (Ryue Nishizawa), and one of only three women to receive the Pritzker in its nearly forty-year history. These outliers suggest that, at least for a time, institutional forces contributed to Japanese architects’ greater successes.

The Pritzker Prize is often called “architecture’s Nobel Prize.” However, in contrast to Japan’s Pritzker successes, the first five decades of the Nobel Prize tell a very different story. While a Japanese scientist was seriously considered in the first year, nobody from Japan received the Nobel until nearly half a century later. Today, only 25 of 870 Nobel Laureates come from Japan. Close studies of the early nomination and selection process for the Nobel Prize underscore how Japanese scientists’ competitive internal divisions and limited comfort with dominant languages like English contributed to their work being underestimated or overlooked by Nobel committees. Japanese architects, on the other hand, successfully exploited the same attributes that had negatively affected Nobel success.

The Nobel and Pritzker selection processes also illustrate how, in the early years of each prize, a single, well-placed individual significantly heightened national or factional success. But when such biases became increasingly evident, new nomination and selection approaches assuring greater objectivity emerged. These efforts to reduce partiality strengthened the credibility of the Nobel Prize, while the Pritzker Prize’s value has, ironically, diminished; comparing outcomes over time illustrates why.

While architecture awards and prizes tend to come from institutions dedicated solely to architecture, such as the Pritzker Prize, and many are granted by professional organizations such as the AIA, others are bestowed by institutions that address design more broadly. One such institution is the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, whose National Design Awards (NDA) recognize American achievements in architecture as well as fashion, landscape, communication, interior and interaction design.

Examining the institutional origins of the NDA and the evolution of the program since its inception in 2000, this paper proposes a two-pronged inquiry: First, how is architecture valued when it is evaluated through the broader interdisciplinary lens of design? For example, though the Cooper Hewitt awards a prize in architecture today, it originally celebrated achievements at the architectural scale through the category of “Environment” that equally considered architects, urban planners and landscape designers. The evolving categories of recognition evidence the museum’s changing criteria of assessment, suggesting an alternate conception of architecture than the usual disciplinary approach.

Secondly, how does the award-granting institution itself exercise its agency in contemporary design through the development of its award program? The Cooper Hewitt has a long history of utilizing its collections, exhibitions and publications as tools to encourage specific change in the practice of design. While its previous incarnation as the Cooper Union Museum (founded 1896) considered designers, artisans and students to be its primary audience, the Cooper Hewitt (reestablished 1968) primarily sought to popularize design for the layperson. The NDA program emerged as a way for the museum to reengage with design practitioners, albeit those in mid- to late-career rather than their formative years. Utilizing archival sources and interviews, this paper will uncover the museum’s own aims in establishing the NDA and will evaluate, through an analysis of its winners, its impact over time.

Awards and their publication provide a forum for the elevation and evaluation of new candidates for the canon. As social and economic conditions change, so too do the criteria of judgment. But these criteria do not change naturally or without prolonged battles over the meaning and ramifications of new standards. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) since it founding in 1977, has worked to bring alternative, specifically "Islamic," models of building, working and living into mainstream architectural discourse. The award's Third cycle, which took place in 1987, represents a key, if forgotten, moment in the Award's history. Critics at the time identified the cycle as a "turning point" and "watershed" moment. Significantly, this jury included Robert Venturi and Abdel Wahed el-Wakil, the former associated with Post-modernism and the later know for his anti-modernist and neo-traditional stance. The 1986 cycle sparked a public debate around the jury's selections and exclusions. Some critics found that the jury "abdicated their responsibility to deal with the crucial issue of innovative design in a complex 20th century world." Others felt the jury had caved to "Post-modern" fads by selecting projects without aesthetic value. Some detected "anti-modernist" sentiment or Western guilt turned nostalgia. These debates pivoted around two projects, one selected (Bhong Mosque in Pakistan), and one excluded (Louis Khan's Capitol Complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh). In this paper I document the “discursive event” of the debates surrounding these choices, which can be witnessed through the AKAA’s refreshingly transparent review process. Focusing on the themes of Insiders/Outsiders, Modernity and Aspiration, and Taste and Kitsch, I argue that these projects gave form to a collection of individual positions, institutional stakes and professional self-definitions that had ramifications for our contemporary understandings of architectural practice and value.