Appendix: Research summary for Application to Canadian Studies FRP
D. Vanderburgh, 14 nov 2003
3 a) "key issues or the main theoretical problems and the appropriate methodology of
the research to be undertaken"
Public architectural competitions are recognized occasions for debate about collective
identity. In nations like Canada and Belgium, where these identities have been clearly
multiple since national beginnings, the stakes are high, as are the risks of disappointment.
Each public competition opens up a question that is rarely successfully closed: who are "we",
what do "we" share? In this, the comparison with more self-assured southern neighbours –
the U.S. and France, respectively – is instructive. Results of national competitions in these
latter countries have more often either succeeded in confirming a consensus or in generating a
new one, against a background of broadly-shared tropes. Results in Canada and Belgium are
perhaps more interesting, in that they take place in a context in which the very idea of identity
(national, regional, local, cultural, etc.) is contested (cf. Dimitrios and Gagnon 1996).
Competitions begin with a brief, or programme, in which the goals of the competition are
stated. Many of these are objective or quantifiable, such as floor area, functional adequacy,
and financial feasibility. But they may also include a number of imponderables, whose
satisfaction will depend on projects' representational or symbolic content. It is widely
assumed, perhaps correctly, that these latter factors do not offer much direct practical help to
competing architects. Nonetheless, the representational "work" performed by each
competition entry will be critical to its reception by members of the jury, as will the similar
work performed by the jury spokesperson in presenting winners to the general public, and so
on. In fact, given that, first, for a public commission the symbolic content is often the primary
basis of discriminating between competing projects, and, second, that the ascription of a
definitive significance is almost entirely in the hands of the receiving public, it is important to
better understand the communicative context in which competition projects are produced,
judged, and diffused (Lipstadt et.al. 1989; Jong and Mattie1994).
Nonetheless, this is not, or not only, a study of "reception". My interest begins with the
construction of what one might call a "representational rhetoric" by competing designers: a
series of strategic choices that must be made by competitors, in which decisions about the
means of representation are also decisions about its ends. That, at a certain point in the
process, the project escapes from designers' hands in order to receive its particular
significance, and notably in order to be judged in comparison to others, is of great importance,
but is a given of the situation. Also given is the fact that every competitor expects to "win"
(although definitions of winning do vary considerably – see Lipstadt 2003).
Even if the modes of architectural representation, particularly in the context of competitions,
may be seen as a limit case of representation in general (Suaréz 2003), it is nonetheless useful
to enumerate their particular qualities and disadvantages by comparison with more familiar
mimetic and representational activities in, say, the sciences or the arts. It is worth
emphasizing, for example, their prospective character – architectural design consists in
representing something that does not yet exist. The uncertainty of this process, in which
many projects may never leave the paper, does nothing to diminish the seriousness of most
propositions, whose nature is always already constrained by the fact that they imply a
contractual responsibility on the part of the designer. On another register, an important
dimension is the metaphorical distance between representation and the thing represented.
Architectural design, particularly in the context of a competition, must play directly upon this
distance, and not only because of its evident prospective character (Evans 1995). Design uses
different media, at different distances, or "degrees of abstraction," to use a more common
term: drawings, models, computer graphics, all exploit their differing degrees of abstraction in
order to cover the gamut of communicational channels. These are, to paraphrase McLuhan, as
much "message" as "medium": that is to say, the choice of how and where to use each type of
representation constitutes a rhetorical structure and, ultimately, content, that will differ from
one competitor to the next.
How can this understanding of representational rhetoric contribute to questions of collective
identity? As has often been remarked (see Lipstadt 1989), there may be a prima facie
relationship, a kind of mirroring, between visual and political rhetorics in some competition
contexts: a brief that calls for images of cultural coherence may induce competitors to
produce coherent-looking entries proposing coherent-looking buildings. Or, as may be seen
from the steady incursion of so-called Deconstructivist projects throughout the 1980s and
early 1990s, a certain pressure toward a discourse of diversity may have found a positive echo
in projects whose appearance was "diverse". However, if these one-to-one mappings of
textual and visual rhetoric are worth noting, they are not the primary object of this study. On
the contrary, it is the particular choices of possible strategies within these overall conjunctures
that will interest us. The methodological advantage in working on competitions is that a
single brief generates at least several, and often many more, responses. A certain
representativity may then be claimed, and the ensemble of entries may allow the establishing
of a baseline measure of how architects of a given time and place tend to respond to the brief.
Another advantage is that competitions fall into different types: limited, open, ideas
competitions, etc., each of which gives a slightly different complexion to the problem of
designing in the public sphere. Finally, by their resonance with and in the public sphere, they
provide substantial insight into a particular state of public discourse.
b) "indicate clearly both the nature and the scope of the project’s contribution to the
literature in the chosen field and to the advancement of Canadian Studies in the
applicant’s country of residence"
This project is intended to work broadly within a theoretical framework marked out by,
among others, Mauricio Suárez (2003) on representation in science and art, Paul Ricoeur on
metaphor (1975) and identity (1990), and Donald Schön (1983) on reflective practices.
Indeed, my Canadian colleagues insist particularly on the latter aspect, contending that the
contemporary period may be characterized by an "intensification" of reflective practices
(Chupin et. al. 2002). The study is also strongly influenced by a historico-theoretical tradition
in comparative architectural studies that includes such authors as Anthony Vidler (1992) on
architectural exchanges with literary and artistic worlds, Joseph Rykwert (1972) on
architectural mimesis, and, particularly, Robin Evans (1995) on architectural drawing and
design. Finally, I contend that Canadian and Belgian examples will be mutually illuminating
as to the very current question of articulations between architecture and cultural identity.
c) "outline a general schedule of research activities"
My visit to Montreal in January-February of 2005 will provide the occasion to select and
analyze the Canadian case studies, in collaboration with J-P Chupin, as well as to set the
ground rules for further exchange of information and researchers. I anticipate the following
order of events (to be confirmed with my host laboratory):
January 5-10: Acquaintance with LEAP database, preliminary targeting of case studies.
January 10-15: Joint analysis of one selected case (test of analytical grill)
January 15-30: Definitive selection, documentation of chosen cases; corroboration in
collections of Canadian Centre for Architecture, secondary literature search.
February 1-15: Application of refined analytical grill, draft of joint article with JP Chupin
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