尽管获奖潜力巨大，一些建筑师呼吁让竞赛更加公平和公正

× Subscribe Shop Buzz Awards AN Jobs CE Strong Industry Calendar AN Products Library AN Events Tech+ Facades+ Mass Timber –> Trading Notes Outdoor Spaces Reuse + Renewal Digital Issues AN Interior Subjects Architecture Art Design Development Education Facades Features Interiors Landscape Obituary Op-Ed Practice Preservation Products Reviews Sponsored Sustainability Technology Transportation Urbanism Regions National East Southeast Midwest Southwest West International About Contact Advertise Stockists Contributors Privacy Policy Skip to content SUBJECTS Architecture Art Buzz Design Development Education Facades Features Interiors Landscape Obituary Op-Ed Practice Urbanism Preservation Products Reviews Sponsored Sustainability Technology Transportation Urbanism REGIONS National East Southeast Midwest Southwest West International Digital Issues AN Interior AWARDS Jobs Calendar Products CE STRONG EVENTS Tech+ Facades+ Re-Use Summit CE STRONG Outdoor Spaces Trading Notes Subscribe Shop Thrill of the Hunt Despite the potential payoff of winning, some architects call for competitions to be fairer and more equitable By Diana Budds • March 23, 2026 • • –> Architecture , Editor’s Picks , National , Professional Practice Weiss/Manfredi launched its practice winning a competition to design the Olympia Fields and Community Center in Illinois. (Paul Warchol) SHARE The $900 billion dollar consulting industry has remade all aspects of business, from how the C-suite approaches management to how the public sector operates. The thinking goes: We don’t have the right in-house expertise, so let’s bring in someone else who does. It’s a strategy that now applies to architecture competitions .
Over the past three decades, architectural competition consultants have shifted from niche experts into a full-fledged industry, which AN covered last fall . As more consultants take on influential roles in the business of building, they have reshaped competitions, thereby becoming powerful gatekeepers between important commissions and the firms who want to design them.
Competition can be a very healthy and rewarding part of design (who doesn’t want to win?), but with costs and requirements for participation rising ever higher, stipends that never cover the investments firms make, and a familiar set of firms securing many of the most prestigious commissions, some architects are eager for a fairer way forward. Across architectural practice, many are calling for terms that support vigorous competition, ethical labor practices, and, of course, exceptional and innovative architecture.
As competition consultants have professionalized, contests themselves have become more demanding. It’s common for competitions to have multiple phases and to ask for digital renderings, 3D models, fly-through animations, a video interview or profile of the architecture firm, and physical models. In later phases, architects are sometimes asked to provide schematic drawings and highly detailed sections. Each deliverable sets the barrier for entry even higher, limiting who can participate.
Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi launched their firm Weiss/Manfredi by winning two competitions: the Women’s Memorial and Education Center, in Virginia, and Olympia Fields and Community Center in Illinois. Both were built in the 1990s. “Given current competition requirements, that might not have been possible today,” Manfredi told AN .
Back then, competition asks were far more manageable. Olympia Fields, for example, consisted of one stage and only required the submission of two boards. “Those requirements are very different from the elevated criteria of contemporary competitions,” Weiss said. It’s not just deliverables that have become more involved; resumes have to be longer, too. In Weiss/Manfredi’s experience, clients want to see a portfolio of buildings that is aligned with the typology and scale that they seek to commission, which also inhibits firms with less experience from participating.
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