How Important is Award-Winning Design to You?

I’m watching a Korean Rom-Com called “Love Next Door”.  The male lead is an architect, and I’m really enjoying seeing him have some of the common challenges of running a design firm.  His partner is the business guy, and he is the design genius. In a recent episode, the business partner lets the design partner know that one of their projects has won “best design of the year.”  When the design partner doesn’t react, the biz guy thinks that this guy has won so many awards that he doesn’t get excited anymore.  Of course, after the biz guy leaves, the design guy jumps up and pumps his fist.  It doesn’t get tiresome to win awards.

But what does award winning design mean?  Who are the judges? What are the criteria? Do the winning projects all look the same?  Is trendy style the primary criteria? Interestingly, the Boston Society for Architecture, has changed their awards criteria to include sustainability and community benefits, not just the style of the project.As a firm doing primarily renovations, with more moderate budgets than many of the projects featured in design magazines or awards ceremonies, we often think about how we define success. (Author’s Note: we might win some awards if we actually submitted our projects to the competitions).  Success on every project may be defined differently: Did we meet the client’s criteria from our onboarding process? Did we meet our own criteria for sustainability and solving design challenges? Did we stretch or did we repeat ourselves? Was the process smooth and enjoyable for all parties?  Did everyone get treated fairly?

I believe life is a challenge of small but continuing improvements to everything that we do.  We spend more time in the onboarding process to prepare our clients for what can go wrong, and how together we can help prevent the worst from being realized. (Unfortunately, or fortunately, I do not control the universe…sh-t happens).

By the way, the Korean architect gets hired to design a bookstore for a world renown violinist.  He conceives that the building itself should make sounds passively as wind passes through air holes like in a recorder. Fun! Any energy codes being broken?

Have you ever wondered about how awards are given? Do you care about whether your design firm has won awards?  Please let us know your thoughts.