Winning isn't everything ... Richard Rogers' Lloyds building
Monday night's Booker Prize got plenty of airtime on the Ten O'Clock News. There's an inevitable public debate about what's wrong with art every time the Turner comes around. Some friends of mine even stay up all night to watch the Oscars.
So what's with architecture? The Stirling Prize for architecture goes out live on Channel 4, yes, but there doesn't seem to be quite the same interest. The newspapers might run a short paragraph about the winner, if that. I doubt many gentlemen taking the omnibus to Clapham now know who David Chipperfield is - hell, one of my colleagues hissed back: "Of course I do. He's a character from Dickens."
And do architectural gongs like the Pritzker, won by our very own Richard Rogers this year (try asking about that down the local), and the Stirling make any difference to the winner? In many ways, it seems like the more plaudits you get, the less work you're offered. Look at Richard MacCormac - he's a Royal Academician and yet his practice has virtually disappeared (although the Broadcasting House debacle might have had something to do with it).
You would think architecture would command more, not less, attention than the Booker and Turner. Who has time to read all the shortlisted books before the announcement as a prerequisite for disagreeing with friends and family? Who even knows the first thing about what's considered contemporary art (I may be being ignorant)? Architecture, on the other hand, should be easy to form an opinion on. You may not be able to visit the buildings, but you can get a good idea from the pretty pictures on the RIBA website. It's mostly democratic (well, in the last ten years or so) and you still get plenty of controversy - I mean, really, the Scottish Parliament was the best building of 2005? Did no one notice the shed I got that year?
I guess it does make a difference to the architects - sometimes. Future Systems banked their £20,000 Stirling cheque for the NatWest Media Centre on the Monday morning, staving off pressing creditors. Wilkinson Eyre went from being a small-to-medium sized practice to a medium-to-large one on the basis of two Stirling wins. And it could make a big difference to the way Chipperfield is regarded by people in this country, who may come to agree with German and Spanish clients that it is worth paying for good architecture.
And how does Stirling compare to the other prizes? Tony Chapman, the man behind the awards, argues: "We don't pick Stirling winners because they appeal to the public and we could certainly never be accused of that. I think Booker might be more "public domain" as a name, but I bet if you vox-popped in the street the week after one of the prizes you'd find more people could name the winning building than the book. Turner thrives solely on the controversy which the organizers court - we deal with controversy when it arises and yet sometimes it's welcome, sometimes it's not. But it's interesting that TV has more or less given up on the other two but still devotes an hour and 12 minutes to architecture every year."
So what do you think - should architecture be made more populist, do architects care for gongs, and do we even need prizes and juries to tell us what to think?
