Do architects in Melbourne win more architecture awards?
How do you feel about architecture awards, and how easy or difficult it is to win one?
Are you concerned that some architecture and design programs appear to be biased - consciously or not - or unfairly skewed towards some cities and states?
That’s a common complaint I’ve heard from many architects over the years; especially those who live and work in the less populated states and territories.
In fact, for many architects operating outside the major capital cities, it seems as though most of the awards (and publishing opportunities!) tend to favour architects in bigger cities, especially Melbourne and Sydney.
As a result, architects around Australia wonder if it’s even worth their time and money to compile awards entries, when anecdotal evidences suggests that they have little to no chance of taking home a prize or recognition for their effort.
What are some of the other commonly held beliefs about architecture awards?
There is also a commonly-held perception that architects in the larger cities are called upon more frequently to act as awards jurors, and a sense that this perceived favouritism could skew the distribution of awards, with familiarity and proximity to people and projects playing a role in the selection process, even if that happens unconsciously.
The 2019 National Awards jury included one architect each from New South Wales, WA and Tasmania, and two from Victoria.
Another possible explanation for the perceived bias towards projects in Victoria and New South Wales is that there are simply more projects completed each year in Melbourne and Sydney, than there are in other towns and cities around Australia.
That means there are more potential awards entries emerging from those major population centres, leading us to conclude that the distribution of winners is purely a numbers game.
Of course, this increased volume of projects means that architects in the major capitals have more opportunities to hone their craft over time, and to refine their approach with each and every project, resulting in more polished and refined outcomes, which then pick up the lion’s share of awards.
As a corollary to this, it’s often said that clients are more design-literate and discerning in Australia’s bigger cities - especially Melbourne which has a very strong design culture compared to some other capitals - and therefore they are more likely to understand and appreciate the value of investing in high quality design; yet another factor that has the potential to result in more and better awards entries emerging from these larger cities.
These are complex issues and it’s difficult to tease them apart and work out which of these claims might be substantiated.
What data exist to help make sense of these commonly held beliefs?
Until now, there has been little in the way of reliable data that we could refer to, to try and unpick these suggestions and assertions.
So I was intrigued to receive an awards dossier last year, which assembled a raft of data and unpacked the distribution of people (jurors) and projects (shortlisted entries and winners) across Australia.
The dossier contains information drawn from publicly available websites about six major awards programs - over the past 10 years - including:
the Institute’s Chapter and National Awards,
the HOUSES Awards,
the Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA),
the Eat Drink Design Awards,
the Sustainability Awards, and
the Timber Design Awards.
These data and their accompanying analysis provide some fascinating insights about the location of the most awarded projects are in Australia, and whether there is any correlation between juries, shortlisted entries and winners.
You can see for yourself, in the graphs below.
So what can we learn about the distribution of architecture and design awards from this dossier?
The dossier brings together data from six major awards program websites in an attempt to ascertain whether there are any discernible patterns across the states and territories, relating to the make up of juries, the number of shortlisted entrants and the eventual winners.
Some data sets (especially from five-plus years ago) were hard to source for less popular awards programs, because their websites were glitchy or pages didn't exist anymore; this was especially the case for the IDEA program.
For most programs though, the dossier contains data on the distribution of the winning entries, the shortlisted entries, and the home state of the jurors (which tend to be weighted towards the home state of the program organisers).
The most reliable and complete data sets were available for the most popular awards programs (the Institute’s National Awards, HOUSES and Eat Drink Design) and the table below includes combined data from those top three programs for the past 10 years:
The dossier also includes breakdowns of each awards program by year (these are not illustrated shown here) as well as explanatory notes and topline analysis pertaining to each of the programs included in the study, as follows:
AIA National Awards
When a project receives an award at State or Territory Chapter level, it automatically progresses to the National Awards. The data includes all awards and named award winners (excluding any Chapter specific awards), so - in theory - there should be roughly equal numbers from each state being judged for the National Awards shortlist.
The same jury panel for the National Awards selects the shortlisted entries and the winners.
National juries were mostly equitably drawn from each state in line with population, with NSW, Qld, WA and the NT slightly under-represented, and VIC, SA, Tas and the ACT slightly over-represented.
Houses Awards
There was very strong representation from Victoria in each of the datasets: ie juries, shortlisted entries and award winners.
Eat, Drink, Design Awards
Again, there was very strong Victorian representation across the juries, shortlisted entries and award winners.
IDEA Awards
For some of the past 10 years, it was difficult to locate sufficient data, but for those years where data were available, the results were usually dominated by Victorian design studios, especially a handful of practices that collected the majority of awards.
Without a complete 10-year data set, it’s difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about this program.
Australian Sustainability Awards
These awards tended to be dominated by NSW people (in the juries) and projects (as far as award winners go).
Timber Design Awards
These awards also tended to be dominated by NSW in relation to juries and award winners.
While it seems at first glance as if these awards programs were dominated by people and projects emerging from the city/state where the awards organisers themselves were located, further analysis of these figures reveals a different story.
Like the earlier table, this one includes collected data from the top three programs - the Institute’s National Awards, HOUSES and Eat Drink Design) for the past 10 years - which has been analysed in terms of population and the proportion of registered practicing architects in each state.
In short, the breakdowns of Award Winners Per Capita (the number of awards per 1m people) and Award Winners Per Registered Practicing Architect demonstrate that the awards are more evenly spread across all states and territories over the past decade, at least when it comes to the collected results from these top three programs.
There are anomalies and skewed results within some of the individual programs, and these are more pronounced in some years than others, and I will post about them in a future article
Taken together those, this data and its insights confirm for the first time that architects in every state and territory have a relatively even chance of winning an award, especially in relation to the number of registered practicing architects in each state.
What does this mean for you and your entries?
Now that we have access to data that suggest that - when viewed collectively over the past 10 years - entries into the top three programs had a relatively fair chance of winning an award, the quality of your awards entries takes on an even more significant role.
It’s no longer sufficient to suggest that architects in larger cities will dominate the field, and thereby knock your project out of the running before you even submit your entry.
Knowing that, there are two ways that you can enhance your entries this year, to make the most of your time, effort and awards investment, and to increase your your chances of winning.
Firstly, you can take the CPD training called Strategically plan your Awards, which sets out how to choose which projects to enter and which programs will best suit your business development goals. Approaching your awards entries strategically means you can use them to progress your business development goals, to win more of the work you love doing.
Secondly, you can take our CPD training called Turn your Awards into Marketing Gold, to learn from award-winning architects who to wring every last drop of value from your entries. This 2-hour workshop recording is worth 2 Formal CPD points and it contains:
insights from Kerstin Thompson and John Wardle Architects about how to use awards for business development purposes, among others,
step-by-step instructions on how to write compelling entries that will appear to jurors, the media and your future clients, and
guidance to repurpose your awards entries into marketing materials for your other channels, so you can continue to extract value from your entries long after the announcements are over.
If you have any questions about our awards CPD training, or you’d like to book a session with Rachael to plan your entries and identify the “hook” or angle to frame your entry narrative, please get in touch via email.
What about awards program reform?
If you’re concerned about fair and equitable representation for architects in awards programs across Australia, feel free to put forward your suggestions and recommendations to the various awards organisers.
For example, the Institute is setting up a new Awards Review Working Group this year, so that’s a useful starting point for programs that are run directly by that peak body, and programs that are run by Architecture Media (ie HOUSES, Eat Drink Design).
And if you have other issues about awards - around the entry criteria, or definitions of sustainability, or the types of projects that are typically recognised - you could share those with the organisers too.
Awards play a significant role in shaping the public’s opinion of architecture - and who should benefit from good design - and as the world transitions to a low carbon future, their importance cannot be overstated.