Heroes for a day

Spent a pleasant day at the presentation and press conference for our recent competition win. We drove for nearly five hours in pounding rain (not counting the meal break), the weather cleared just as we arrived at the town hall.

The town is tiny, set high on a hilltop in the lush, rolling green of northern Bavaria; much closer to Prague than to Munich, let alone to Stuttgart. The site inspection visits will be a problem (or rather, will require an overnight stay), however that is not yet our problem.

For the non-architects among my readers (surely the majority): the situation is by no means as clear as you might think. We have won a competition, but it does not follow that we will design and build the project. The developer (in this case, the town council) is not obliged to follow the decision of the competition jury, but may award the contract to whichever project they wish - or can ignore the competition and just give the job to their friends. (What the hell, it's only the taxpayers' money.)

The other competitors have a two-week period to appeal against the decision, if they feel that we won by underhanded means or that their scheme was misrepresented, but few bother. Architects as a group are very proud, and would not stoop to public quarreling. Instead, they invite the developer to dinner in a particularly fine restaurant (or at the home of "my good friend the mayor") and explain why their losing scheme is better than the winner. This is disappointingly common, particularly in cases like this where the honest, hard-working, God-fearing locals were beaten by the heathen city slickers; such a defeat is by definition unfair, and that we are not even Bavarians makes the insult that much worse.

For now, we have a measure of glory and a buttload of money, and the chance of a nice job. The rest will become clear during the next three weeks.