Our primary objective in writing this piece is to understand how it is that architects are often divorced from public work. We want to try to understand how process selection governs outcome and how the principles under which projects are procured – the method in which consultants are selected – determine the fate and success or not of projects.

We understand the different procurement models. We understand the many imperatives that must be met, including financial, commercial and risk. We understand that projects and their procurement are increasingly complex. We also understand that the most important aspect is the legacy that urban design and architecture leaves and just how crucial the process is in determining that.

There are many strands to this argument – from different procurement approaches and how they operate in the public and private realms to the regulatory and urban design controls.

Fundamentally, we believe the primary issue is one of culture. If we do not value or even understand the worth of urban design and architecture, then our built environment ultimately suffers. Without an imbedded recognition of the importance and input of design at every stage in the process – inception, selection and completion – you cannot expect
a cohesive architectural outcome.

Anthony Vile’s opinion piece in the March/April 2013 issue of ArchitectureNZ discusses the architectural profession’s increasing marginalisation from, exclusion from and corresponding lack of innovative work in the public realm, due to the process by which public bodies and agencies select consultants.

In the United Kingdom, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has recognised this also and, in a recent publication entitled Building Ladders of Opportunity, has estimated that 85 per cent of the architectural community is effectively precluded from public work due to Request for Proposal (RFP) criteria and their overly prescriptive evaluation basis which is focused on track record and turnover.

This has also been echoed by the Architects’ Council of Europe (ACE), which seeks to facilitate participation of more architectural firms in public procurement and promote selection procedures and, most importantly, award criteria based on quality. The RIBA makes three recommendations: firstly, it recommends increasing efficiency in public procurement; secondly, it suggests embedding a process that is design focused; and, finally, it calls for creating a more competitive market by increasing architectural access
to public-sector work.

While public agencies used to employ in-house architects (for example, Tibor Donner set up the architectural office in Auckland City Council in the 1940s and was its chief architect until 1967), today, with a few notable exceptions like Ludo Campbell-Reid, public agencies often do not have a culture, knowledge or professional training in urban design, architecture or design. Without the internal skill sets or resources to facilitate, organise or evaluate the consultants, a meaningful and competitive architectural process is difficult.

Public agencies often require clear, unambiguous and auditable trails of decision-making to justify selection. As a result, public agencies often employ qualification-based selection (QBS) processes with weighting systems that score particular areas. These processes tend to elevate track record, turnover and company size – and, according to the RIBA report, preclude many with overly restrictive prerequisites. They tend to overlook design at the expense of record, which reduces competition and effectively bars emerging talent. It often creates Catch 22 moments: for example, to compete for a library, entrants are required to have completed three in the previous two years. One solution is to partner with a firm with the required track record and, while sometimes positive, this is more often simply a tactic to generate the largest portfolio of relevant experience and, therefore, tick the most boxes. It can create cumbersome teams that are not the most efficient or necessarily the best for the project.

Public agencies are increasingly running ‘preferred consultants’ short lists – meaning that some RFPs will never see the public light of day but will go only to a preselected few, again, reducing the prospective talent pool and restricting competition. The QBS process is more often about minimising perceived risk, finding a ‘safe pair of hands’, than it is about championing design or innovation and assumes that previous experience is the best way of ensuring this. If risk is the primary concern, there are many ways of mitigating it. Risk mitigation should not be the standard or bar for the urban design and architecture of our cities. A QBS process certainly has its place in determining some projects but the way it is structured and evaluated needs to have design as its main criteria. A strict or formulaic assessment criteria, as the RIBA has shown, reduces competition and typically produces known and repetitive outcomes. The determination and evaluation of this process needs to be undertaken by those with professional training and experience of urban design or architecture – which is often the not the case currently.

An alternative to this is design-based selection (DBS), which is the selection of consultants on the basis of a proposed design solution for a particular scheme and an intellectual response to a particular brief. A DBS process is more inclusive of the architectural community and produces more innovative urban design and architectural solutions. 
The RIBA has shown that 57 per cent of projects run through a competitive design process go on to win awards in the United Kingdom – a much higher percentage than for those projects that do not. However, a DBS process requires an organisational culture that understands the benefit of such an approach, and it requires more architectural and urban design input in establishing at the outset and evaluating the selection of consultants at the conclusion. Again, though, it has been demonstrated to deliver better results for our built environment. Both the RIBA and the ACE champion this process and advocate a standardised approach where firms are firstly short-listed by accredited design professionals, then move to a remunerated second phase.

Public procurement in Switzerland is required to be put through a competitive design process. Finland goes further and requires that competitions, public and private, are run through SAFA – the Finnish Institute of Architects – and these are internationally regarded as the benchmarks for arranging architectural competitions for both public
and private bodies.

Citylab is an Australian organisation that facilitates public and private bodies who may not have expertise in running urban design and architectural competitions across Australasia. It is similar to Germany’s Phase Eins (Phase 1) in that both organisations advocate for a more-inclusive and design-based competitive market. Citylab is currently running the Gold Coast Cultural Precinct competition in Queensland and the Henley Square Urban Design competition in South Australia. It also organised Waterfront Auckland’s ideas competition for a waterfront hotel, which was a good example of a design-based selection process
that allowed Fearon Hay – a small firm with limited large-scale experience – to win a major design competition on Auckland’s waterfront (in tandem with Peddle Thorp). The project has since been put to the market with consortia bids determining the final team of developer and architect. The key to the success of the Waterfront Auckland ideas competition is a culture and recognition of the importance of urban design and architecture – aided by its external design review panel TAG (Technical Advisory Group) – and, not surprising given the strip of land under its jurisdiction, it is some of the most scrutinised and debated in New Zealand. 

OMA, MVRDV and BIG, all relatively unknown and emerging architectural firms, made their names winning major design competitions while in New Zealand, Architectus’ big break came when it won the University of Canterbury’s Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Building competition. The Architectus competition entry relied on a well-informed architectural jury and client allowing Architectus to enter with no previous large-scale or tertiary experience.

The culture of public agencies towards urban design or architecture hugely determines the outcomes. If agencies do not have the people, resources or skill sets to determine or evaluate design, then their decision-making process and the outcomes will reflect this. If architects and urban designers are not part of this process, then the expectation of quality architecture should be cautious.

Private development forms the majority of what we would visually define as the public domain. It frames what are actually publicly owned portions but dominates the way a city looks and feels. Typically, private development is governed by quantitative planning controls in place over a particular site; these include height limits, floor area ratio (FAR), setbacks, etc., and some minimal qualitative controls. Private owners are required only to meet these controls and then do what is in their commercial best interests.

But, what if the private realm were incentivised or required to adopt a competitive and mandated architectural process as a means of lifting the bar on many of our cities’ developers?

The City of Sydney employs what it calls the Design Excellence Program. The programme requires that all new private developments that exceed a particular capital value or height limit run an architectural competition, carried out under the City of Sydney competitive design policy. This process declares publicly that good design is demanded by government and should prevail in the final built outcome, and it opens the minds of developers to a range of possibilities on a site. Other cities in Australia are now looking to implement similar schemes following the success of the programme in Sydney.

Although the 209m-tall Barangaroo tower in Sydney has been highly politicised and the competition was rerun, the project has been played out to a remarkable degree in the public eye. Compare this with the recent Elliot Tower in Auckland (coincidentally, it is also 209m tall), which has only ever appeared as a fait accompli in the media with little debate or commentary.

In Auckland, the Urban Design Panel (UDP) reviews and evaluates urban design and architectural projects against the Auckland District Plan, which gains regulatory power under the Resource Management Act (RMA). Unlike the Canadian city of Vancouver’s Urban Design Panel, on which the Auckland process was modelled, the UDP is non-statutory and can only make recommendations that are incorporated into the reports prepared as parts of the resource consent (RMA terminology) granting process. The Vancouver UDP system also provides panels with an ability to state their support or non-support for applications. This is fundamentally different from the way the process operates in Auckland where panels can make suggestions only. Architects and urban designers must effectively pass a bar set by the Vancouver UDP, whereas the Auckland version allows sub-standard schemes to be nursed through the system until they are deemed acceptable. It does not incentivise clients to ensure they have the best consultants possible.

Due to constraints, the Auckland UDP does not review all but only some projects, with the trigger being what council planners feel are significant sites or projects that require more attention than just a standard planning review. The expectation in the creation of the UDP was to create an environment in which the general bar of urban design and architecture
was lifted. The Auckland UDP has been operating for more than ten years now and the feeling is that, while it has raised the status, awareness and maturity of urban design, it has not necessarily pushed all designers to achieve better outcomes.

Similar to the UDP, Auckland Council runs the internal Major Projects Design Review Team (MPDRT), which reviews some but not all internal council projects. These, however, tend to be more to allow input from internal council stakeholders – such as maintenance – on issues they feel may need to be addressed, rather than a design critique.

Changing our culture

We believe a cultural shift has to occur inside public agencies to emphasise the primary importance of urban design and architecture. This shift can occur only when agencies have key senior management design professionals who can affect change catalytically. In a similar way to what the RIBA has begun, the NZIA needs to advocate and champion this change in public agencies on behalf of the architectural community. 

We also believe that the qualification-based selection process, often employed in the public sphere, tends to preclude many urban designers and architects, is overly restrictive due to strict assessment criteria, and discourages innovation and, therefore, needs to be refocused to place more emphasis on design. We need to move increasingly towards a design-based selection process. This is a competitive design process that is more inclusive, creates greater innovation and has been shown to produce better results. This process should follow the RIBA, RAIA and NZIA competition guidelines and short-listed firms should be remunerated for their time.

We feel that the private sphere should be incentivised or, indeed, required to use a competitive design-based process, along the lines of the City of Sydney Design Excellence Program. The trigger for projects requiring this could be, perhaps, developments that fall inside a certain geographic area (such as Auckland’s downtown) or developments over a certain size or taller than a certain height or a combination of those factors. Auckland Council would need to implement this policy and imbed it within the development process.

In our opinion, the Urban Design Panel should be mandatory for all projects, with the trigger, again, developments that fall inside a certain geographic area, developments over a certain size or taller than a certain height or a combination. The panel should be empowered to employ a ‘support/do not support’ system with all Urban Design Panel submissions made publicly available.

We need a cultural shift in the New Zealand public and private built landscape. We need to ensure or incentivise, such that design quality is the core determinant of what we build. Again, the champion of this change needs to be and can only be the New Zealand Institute of Architects.