|
"Great designs demand great clients," observed Moshe Safdie, FAIA, jury chair of this year’s BW/AR Awards, invoking Louis Sullivan when describing the primary condition for the winning projects submitted in this year’s program. Architects cannot do their best job without a client participating in and understanding the aims of a design. Clients can't use architecture to its best advantage without architects understanding the clients' business-driven mandates. Because collaboration plays so valuable a part in determining winning projects, jury members in the program are drawn from both the business/institutional communities and the design professions to assure a balanced vote.
In the submission narratives, architects describe how their designs respond to the needs of clients, and clients provide concrete data on how design facilitated better business. Business here is broadly defined to encompass any entity that serves the public and seeks to succeed according to a variety of criteria, which may include employee retention, increased quality output, or enhanced publicity or branding. In the end, all the submissions cited on the following pages get to the heart of what collaboration is really about. Herein find the 2004 winners and finalists of the Business Week/Architectural Record Awards program.
—Jane F. Kolleeny and Audrey Beaton
|
