I would like to clarify your front page story and leader (June 7) on the McCarthy & Stone competition run by the RIBA.
The RIBA and the client were very clear in the competition brief that this was a design ideas competition to look at innovative ways for housing older people. It is the client’s intention to work with the winning practice to build the design either wholly or in part, on an appropriate site. McCarthy & Stone have been so impressed by the outcome
that not only has the winner Tom Russell Architects already been asked to develop ideas, but some of the other entrants are being considered to commission future work on the basis of the design proposals they submitted.
The competition was run to the RIBA’s rigorous principles set out in our Guide to Design Competitions and, as ever, copyright rests with the author of the submitted design; suggestions that the client might use a design without the involvement of the architect responsible are unfounded.
Given the global economic downturn, it’s not a surprise that fewer competitions took place last year than in 2009. This year sees an increasing number of large, prestigious competitions for Kingston University, the Metropolitan Police Service and the London School of Economics, amongst many others both in the UK and internationally.
Richard Brindley
RIBA executive director membership & profession
RIBA should follow through
The latest RIBA competition debacle at Coppice Hill (News June 7) makes depressing reading and can only serve to bring the system into further disrepute. Apparently this was a project competition, not an ideas or designer selection competition. The institute’s Code of Practice for Architectural Competitions, which we launched after extensive consultations in 1986 in partnership with the then-DOE, has never, so far as I am aware, been superseded in the intervening 27 years. It states unequivocally: “Project competitions should be undertaken only where the promoter is able to give a firm commitment to build the winning scheme, subject to receiving the necessary statutory consents” — and with the winning architect appointed to see it through.
If no such commitment was confirmed in this competition brief, the RIBA should not have put its name to it. Conversely, if a cynical promoter is reneging on such a commitment, I suggest that 120 practices who expended skill, time and resources on their schemes are entitled to know what the institute is doing about it.
Eli Abt
London N3
Postscript
Editor’s note: Just to clarify, the original RIBA competition brief said, “Design professionals are invited to submit design proposals based on McCarthy & Stone’s forthcoming
site in Bishop’s Waltham, Hampshire or similar. It is McCarthy & Stone’s intention that the winning architect will have the opportunity to develop the competition site and take the project through to completion.”
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