The architect, the client, the competition....and the struggle

Architects have always been concerned with fame and glory, holding a special position in the society of their era. Yet, like the agents of many other professions, they too have had to struggle for to survive within contexts sometimes extremely hostile to their \u91artistry\u92. Struggle for predominance and the right to define the architectural field\u92s standards of accomplishment, is at the center of the professionals\u92 relation to each other, but also to agents of other, interacting with their own, social groups. Competitions in particular have often been considered as one field where architects significantly conjunct with other social groups. This paper aims primarily at providing a first-hand account of the professionals\u92 attitude toward competitions and thus feed the debate on the architects\u92 motives for participating in them. Subsequently, it seeks to reflect on the way accomplishment standards of the architectural profession are defined through the process framework of architectural competitions, and through the interaction within them between professionals, or between architects and clients, as well as on the way these standards relate to distinct conceptual approaches and their radical or conventional character. To do that, emphasis is placed on the architects\u92 attitude towards different types of competition procedures (mainly distinguishing invited from open competition procedures) throughout their professional career. Discussion is based on data collected during a set of interviews conducted by the author with epresentatives of five architectural firms in Switzerland