The Judgement Process in Architectural Design Competitions as a Deliberative Communicative Practice

Abstract

Architectural design competitions are used as a means of judgement and a way of commissioning important architectural projects. Judgement process in architectural competitions appear to be problematic for several reasons. A literature review on the judgment process highlighted several issues related to the quality of judgment in architectural competitions. However, those issues indicated the existence of a problem in current practice that is related to a lack of effective communication between the stakeholders involved in the process, which affects the accountability of the outcomes of this process.

This research aims to contribute to the theory of the judgement process in architectural design competitions with a view to improving current practice. After investigating the methodological possibilities available towards achieving the research aim, the nature of the research problem, and the availability of the data required for the research, it has been envisaged that theory building would be the methodological approach suitable for this study. Relevant theories with the potential to contribute to this research area were investigated, with the aim of facilitating the proposition of a new theoretical framework. The theory of deliberative democracy was interrogated by employing a theory-building methodology to enable the construction of a theoretical framework that is intended to contribute to the formation of practical measures and facilitate and improve communication between all stakeholders involved in the judgement process.

Thematic analysis has been employed to investigate the potentials of the theory of deliberative democracy and how it can contribute to the formation of a framework that encapsulates the core themes of the theory and how to employ them into the context of judgement in architectural competitions. The new framework is anticipated to help improve transparency and accountability of the judgement process, to facilitate, and aid the knowledge exchange between all the parties involved, and consequently, improve the judgement process in architectural design competitions. At theoretical level, it is expected that the findings and recommendations of this research can set out a new meta-theory which can contribute to the enrichment of existing approaches and theoretical standpoints in architecture competitions research and introduce new avenues through which existing research can be improved further. In addition, this research contribution is anticipated to open the ground for the adoption of new theoretical frameworks from other relevant disciplines into contexts that share similar characteristics with the context of this research.

Date of Award	Nov 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Ryan Southall (Supervisor), Poorang Piroozfar (Supervisor) & Alan Tomlinson (Supervisor)