Winner held best promise for Iraq

Our panel’s remit was to judge and rank the entries, all of which were anonymous. We went to Baghdad, met the committee responsible for the project, conducted the judging and followed up with a full report.

We found the judging arrangements made by the ICOR to have high standards of probity and rigour. We were moved by the sincerity, passion and determination of the people we met, working in conditions that are barely imaginable from the comfort of London.

It is the ICOR’s decision how it would like to proceed; the competition conditions and our briefing by the committee made clear that there was no obligation to build the winning entry, or any entry, and that it could consider any of the high-placed firms, or more than one.

We selected as winner the entry that held the best promise to house the future parliament of a country with an ambition to create a genuinely open and participative democracy, in a city with one of the oldest urban civilisations. Clearly that is the one we hope emerges as the concept to take forward.

Sunand Prasad
Past president, RIBA

Assemblage replies

Is Zaha Hadid the obvious candidate to design Iraq’s parliament? (Leader January 11). Most new parliaments are by non-nationals. Should the new Reichstag have been by a German architect? Should Richard Rogers receive London’s most important commissions because he is English? The “message it would send the world” could in fact be provincialism.

The submissions were shortlisted to 32. The longlist was over 130 firms. Why is one internationally acclaimed name a bad thing? Elsewhere in the arts, new winners emerging from left field is taken for granted — it’s considered healthy, in fact essential.

The judges highly praised our scheme. Other entries for the Sydney Opera House were awful. How does this lessen Jørn Utzon’s achievement?

To win the Booker Prize you submit your book, not your brand. All architects have a stake in this outcome. It strikes at the root of what keeps architecture a vital, believable art.
And, by the way, the authorities have not “ceased all contact” and continue to be in touch.

Peter Besley
Assemblage

All architects are equal

While I agree with the sentiment of your comment, I take issue with your twice-repeated opinion that Hadid is the “obvious” choice (Leader January 11).

Because of where she was born or because of her merits as an architect? No architect sits on such a high moral pedestal that they can forgo the normal channels of public procurement and receive a commission as a birthright. BD has commented negatively on such behaviour by a certain member of the British royal family.

We are led to believe that her entry was judged to be poorer than two other entries. By this alone, she should not receive the commission. However, since she is now actively engaged in publicly humiliating the RIBA, I trust that she will be treated with the same disdain shown by Arb to other, lesser mortals, who have breached standards of professional conduct.

Basil Rathbone
via bdonline