成功获得建筑竞赛的7条实践性建议
7 Practical Advices On How To Success In Architectural Competitions
由专筑网缕夕，杨帆编译
今年早些时候，我们进入了eVolo的年度摩天大楼竞赛，目标是挑战人们了解垂直建筑与自然和建筑环境之间的关系。这是由前卫的建筑杂志eVolo主办的概念性竞赛，它重视故事，原创和有远见的观点。我们的建议是，由连续的水平的摩天大楼围绕一个沉没的中央公园（一个“边界”，后来被一些文章所呼吁）。我们的这个想法对人们对摩天大楼的理解产生了巨大的挑战，同时也解决了纽约这样的大城市现如今面临的一些社会和环境矛盾。大胆的概念规划最终被选为世界各地近500项作品中的第一名。
我们很高兴参加这次竞赛，不是因为我们赢了，而是作为年轻的设计师，我们可以有机会把一些想法呈现出来，被广泛的观众讨论甚至批评。回顾过去，我们也意识到，成功的条件不仅仅是靠艰苦的工作。
除了明显的条件，我们也希望能提供一些实用的建议，从我们为入场准备开始，我们发现了一些特别真实和有用的经验，我们希望与参与建筑设计竞赛的所有年轻专业人士分享：
1.确定你的目标
为什么我要参加？我想从中得到什么？建筑竞赛既费时又费力，而且大部分都要求您支付报名费用。所以在接受挑战之前，要先考虑好这些问题。
除了奖品之外，参赛者还可以从建筑竞赛中获得很多：丰富个人的履历，增强设计思维和技能，从学校或公司项目中脱颖而出等等。
虽然不会因为目标定位过高而失败，但设计竞赛不是标准化测试。获胜项目和其他作品都有很好的机会，您可能无法获胜，然而设计没有对错。换句话说，参与设计竞赛不应该只为赢得最后的胜利，而是要学会充分表达自己的原创思想，在没有任何恐惧或约束的情况下进行尝试，最终获得高质量的工作成果。
参加竞赛应该是一个有益的和愉快的体验。记住，这是你自己的工作，你是做出所有决定的人，没有人强迫你这样做。所以不要浪费时间思考陪审团想要什么，观众可能会说什么。无论结果如何，良好的态度都会取得良好的助益效果。
2.选择合适的竞赛和参赛队伍。
竞赛提供了向一些独立的企业学习与增长经验的好机会。了解你自己或自身团队的实力，选择你感兴趣的竞争对手，在策略上是最明智的。
竞赛主要分为两种 - 概念性的和实际性的，请确保选择合适的竞赛，以最大化利用您和您团队的优势。除非你想尝试不同的选择来测试你的潜力，并从中学到更多。综上所述，一旦你清楚要从这场比赛中获得什么，那么选择合适的竞赛就不成问题了。
3.仔细阅读参赛标准和要求。
你最不希望发生的就是误解或忽略了设计中的任何错误，所以必须仔细阅读。理解得越透彻，面对陪审团才更有说服力。如果组织过去举办过竞赛，那么可以尝试查看一些以前获奖者的作品，因为它可能会帮助您更清楚地了解他们的重点和标准，以避免发生任何明显的错误。
4.概念与实践之间的平衡。
虽然设计纲要涉及了所有的技术要求，但也不会面面俱到。当我们参加概念性的竞赛时，这个问题是我们最开始就要讨论的。
以我们自己的项目为例。实际上，挖掘和创建地下公园意味着会有很多实际的问题，如地下水，管道，地铁系统，基岩等。如果我们选择解决这些问题中的其中一个，那么另一些就不能很好地解决，大的想法几乎会被削弱。在这种情况下，我们选择不强调这些实际的问题。这可能会引起观众的一些质疑，但至少大多数人都会感受到我们更想表达的信息。
这不是说大胆的概念比现实更重要。我们的具体项目可能并不完全适用于您的项目。但需要谨记的是，无论你对什么样的竞赛感兴趣，它一定会要求一些创新的东西。但这并不意味着要为了创新而创新，而是能够提供一个很好的技术支持。
5.良好的表现意味着逆向工作。
通常，对于建筑竞赛来说，您向观众传达设计的唯一机会是通过提交委员会。其他包括思维过程，研究，草图，研究模式，虽然同样重要，但这几乎都不会提交给陪审团。所以你必须确保表现得足够突出，这样才会给观众留下一个很好的印象。
为了达到这个目的，在其他所有作品开始之前，先在头脑中尝试形成一个粗略的图像。如果可能，做草图布局，设置空白页面文件，放入占位图像和文本框架，然后填补空白。
逆向工作具有两大优势：一方面帮助您思考过程，您始终积极思考，在起草的时候，要清楚自己想要什么，而不会在过程中迷失太多。另一方面，这是一个伟大的进步指标，可以帮助您避免在截止日期之前浪费时间进行不必要的工作。
6.和朋友交谈，询问他们的意见
毕竟，设计大赛主要是与人分享想法。当您尝试将项目总结并将项目呈现给建筑领域的其他人是，尝试征求他们的意见，总是有益的。因为这个概念对于他人来说总是比你更清楚，所以这种做法可以帮助你锐化这个想法，并在几句话中传达项目的重要魅力。
此外，其他人的反馈可能会指出您以前忽视或忽略的东西，这些简单的修复，加起来可能会对您的最终作品产生重大的影响。
7.成为一个好的自我提升者
年轻的设计师经常被迫专注于工作，在完善任何细节上投入了大量的时间。既便如此，我们也应该开始学习如何更好地处理我们职业生涯的业务。
这可以通过简单地向举办方提交作品，撰写杂志文章，建立良好的网站，寻找展览机会等等来逐一实现。在当今世界，有越来越多更多的方式可以进行自我推销，而不仅仅是静静地做好工作，等待他人发现你，要知道在早期的职业生涯中，想成名是不容易的，所以要把你最好的竞赛作品投到机构中，不管是什么，发布在你的网站上，如果你赢了，就有机会通过不同的媒体渠道来宣传和推广自己。
我希望这个最实用的建议能够以某种方式对你有所启发。我们想知道你是否同意这些是建筑师最重要的考虑因素？如果你有其他补充意见，请在下面的评论中加入讨论。
Earlier this year, we entered eVolo’s annual skyscraper competition and the objective was to challenge the way people understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments. It is a concept competition hosted by the avant-garde architectural magazine eVolo, which values novel, original and visionary ideas. Our proposal, to put it in one sentence, was a continuous horizontal skyscraper around the full perimeter of a sunken Central Park (a “Sidescaper”, as called by some articles later on). This idea we came up with drastically challenged people’s understanding of a skyscraper, meanwhile addressed several social and environmental contradictions that big city like New York faces today. The bold concept was eventually chosen as the 1st Place winner among nearly 500 entries received around the world.
We are very glad we participated, not because that we won, but the fact that as young designers, we could have the chance to put some ideas on paper and be noticed, discussed and even criticized by a wider audience. Looking back, we also realized that to complete successful entries requires more than just hard work.
Beyond the obvious, below are some practical advices we found particularly true and useful from our experience preparing for the entry, and we want to share this with all the young professionals out there who are interested in participating architectural design competitions:
1. Determine Your Goal
Why am I participating? What do I want to get out of this? Architectural competitions can be both time and energy consuming, and most of them requires you to pay a registration fee. So always ask yourself these questions before taking on the challenge.
There are many things one can get out of participating architectural competitions other than the prize: Build up a strong personal portfolio, enhance design thinking and skill, a little escape from everyday school or corporate project, etc. The list can go on and on and none of them requires winning places.
While it would never hurt by aiming high, design competitions aren’t standardized tests. There is a good chance that you may not win, and there is no right or wrong between winning projects and all the other entries. In other words, participating in design competitions shouldn’t be all about winning, rather, it is a safe way to express one’s original ideas with less responsibility and risks than doing practice in the real world, and a great opportunity for you try the best to produce your top quality work without any fear or constrains.
Working on competitions should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience. Remember, this is your own work, you are the one who gets to make all the decisions, and no one is forcing you to do this. So don’t waste time thinking what the juries wants, what the audience might say. Good attitude will help immensely along the way no matter what the outcome is.
2. Choose the Right Competition and the Right Team.
Competitions are good opportunities for people who looking for chances to supplement their professional or school experience with some independent ventures. So know the strength of yourself or your team and choose the competition that interests you and suit you the best both time-wise and strategy-wise.
Since there are mainly two kinds of competition – conceptual and real commissions, make sure that you choose the right path to maximize you and your team’s advantage. Unless you want to try out different things to test your potential and learn more. As pointed out earlier, once you know what you would like to get out of this competition, it is not very difficult to choose the right path.
3. Read the Entry Criteria and Requirements Carefully.
The least thing you wish to happen to your idea is any mistake caused by misunderstanding or neglecting the design brief, so you should read it carefully. The better you comprehend the requirement, the more convincing your work would probably be to the juries. If the organization has hosted competitions in the past, try check out some previous winners’ work, as it might help you know their focus and criteria more clearly, in order to avoid any obvious mistakes.
4. The Balance Between Concept and Practicality.
While the design brief addresses all the technical requirements, it may not say too much about this. As we participated in an idea competition, this question was one of our earliest discussions, probably also the most important one.
Take our own project as an example. In reality, digging down and creates an underground park means there would be a lot of practical concerns, things like underground water, pipings, subway systems, bedrocks etc. If we choose to address every single one of these issues, and use half of the board explaining how some of them can be solved while others not, the big idea would almost certainly be weakened. In our case, we chose to not emphasize some of these practical concerns. This may cause some doubts from the audience, but at least most people get a clearer message of our strong ideas.
This is not saying bold concept is more important than reality, but don’t miss the forest for the trees. Also it is true to our specific project, but might not apply to your project. Just remember, no matter what competition you are interest in, it will certainly ask for something new. That means probably it is not about creating for the sake of being new, but it is backed by a good reason.
5. Good Presentation Means Working Backwards.
Often, for architectural competitions, the only opportunity for you to convey your idea to the viewer is through the submission boards. Everything else, your thinking process, research, sketches, study models, although equally important, are hardly presented to the juries. So you must make sure your board have a great presentation, so that it can leave a great first impression to the viewers.
To achieve that, try have the a rough vision (how do you want the board to be like) already in your head, before all the other works even starts. If possible, do layout sketches, set up the blank page file, put in placeholder images and text frames, and fill the gaps afterwards.
Working backwards has two big benefits: On one hand, it helps you with the thinking process, you are always actively thinking while drafting the boards, being clear with what you want without getting too lost in the exploration. On the other hand, it is a great progress indicator, which helps you avoid wasting time on unnecessary work as the deadline approaches.
6. Talk With Friends And Ask Their Opinions
After all, design competition is mostly about sharing ideas with people. It is always beneficial when you try to summarize and present the project to others, both inside and outside the field of architecture, and ask for their opinions. Because the concept is always clearer to you than it may appears to others, this practice helps you to sharpen the idea and convey the vital charisma of the project within a few sentences.
Moreover, the feedback from others may point out something you overlooked or ignored before, these easy fixes, added up together might make a big difference to your final product.
7. Be A Good Self Promoter
Young designers are often trained to be focus on the work by devoting so many hours in perfecting any details. While there is nothing wrong about it, we should also start to learn how to better handle the business side of our careers.
This could start by simply submitting works to publishers selectively, writing articles for magazines, build a good website, seeking exhibition opportunities, and etc. In today’s world, there is more ways to promote yourself than just doing good work quietly and waiting for others to discover you. It is not easy to establish a name at one’s early career path, so start putting your best competition work in the portfolio, post it on your website no matter what, and if you do win something, hold the chance to promote yourself via different media channels.
I hope this look at the most practical advices have inspired you in some way. We’d love to know if you agree that these are the most important things for architects to consider? If you have other thoughts on what’s important. Please add to the discussion by commenting below.
关于作者：
作者是纽约的设计师。 他们的合作获得了许多奖项，并在国际上出版了许多出版物，包括“卫报”，“福布斯”，“CNN”，“Archdaily”和“建筑文摘”等。他们最近的概念项目“纽约地平线”被选为2016年eVolo国际摩天大楼竞赛的第一名。
About the Authors:
Jianshi Wu and Yitan Sun are a New York based designers. Their collaboration has received numerous awards and has been published internationally in numerous publications including The Guardian, Forbes, CNN, Archdaily and Architectural Digest. Their recent concept project “New York Horizon” was selected as the 1st Place winner for the 2016 eVolo International Skyscraper Competition.
出处：本文译自competitions.archi/，转载请注明出处。
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