Paradoxes of architectural competitions: The competition between efficiency, justice and creativity

Architectural competitions can be analyzed as an institutionalized social technology that seeks to elicit and select great architectural designs in an efficient and fair manner. The introduction of dialogue-based forms of architectural competitions is a new and radical innovation of this old institution. An empirical study of a dialogue-based architectural competition reveals a number of concerns. For dialogues to become sustainable elements in competitions these concerns will have to be addressed and coped with. One major concern to be addressed is the widespread but problematic presumption that dialogues embody a continuous learning and clarification process towards the logical and rational decision of the competition panel.