A pleasant surprise

Sunday afternoon and still no word from the competition organizers; on the other hand, the jury sat on Friday and it had been announced that the entries would be displayed from Sunday to Tuesday. So we said, "ah well, let's go look at the winners" and drove downtown. We entered the exhibition room where the entries were all hung on pinwand partitions; I went left, G and U went right. As I was examining the winner about ten minutes later, I heard a shriek from U and a surprised laugh from G, so I headed in their direction.

I found them standing before a set of drawings that looked oddly familiar, very damned familiar in fact. But they weren't looking at the drawings, they were looking at a large green rosette with a ribbon that said "3rd prize."

Woo-hoo.

Not to look a gift hard-earned horse in the mouth, but: clearly some competition organizers take their duties more seriously than others.

Anyway. Happy happy, joy joy.

In such cases, one always looks at the other entries to see what one might have done differently, where they were better (and one also reads the transcript of the jury's decision). As I read it, there were only two points on which we lost: the connection to the private enclosed garden was dubious (true, I mentioned this previously) and the building volume was too large (i.e. it would be relatively expensive to build). The garden was an oversight, we all misread the briefing documents and were lucky not to be thrown out in the first round. The size of the building was determined by its single best feature, explicitly praised by the jury: the treed atrium in the centre of the building which provided sunlight on both sides of the public areas on all floors, open bright and airy corridors, and a direct view from the front door straight through the building to the garden. Would we have reduced this to win? No. So I for one am very happy with our large atrium and our third prize.