Jury chair overview
Jury chair overview With more than 200 entries submitted, this year’s jury was excited by the overwhelming response to the relaunch of the AA Prize for Unbuilt Work after a decade-long hiatus. From the truly inventive and polemical to the entirely realistic, many of the schemes dealt with the very real issues facing us today, offering suggestions as to how we might change our course into the future. It is an interesting moment in time to relaunch such a speculative prize, living as we are through what feels like one giant experiment. We have been given a chance to dream up a new world; and I believe architects can lead the way by collectively drawing on a unique capacity for imagination and pragmatism. A blind judging process was used to ensure that all submissions – from student entries to those from small and large practices, emerging and established – were placed on an equal footing.
The winning scheme, A Treasure Trove of Space – Rethinking Melbourne’s Car Parks by Bates Smart, tackles an issue that preceded the global pandemic, yet is even more relevant in a post-COVID world in which many city buildings have been left vacant. Melbourne, like other Australian cities, has evolved to preference a car-based experience and carparking now accounts for the third-largest percentage of land use in the CBD. Bates Smart’s proposal suggests a way of addressing the imbalance between space for cars and space for people by repurposing a collection of multi-level carparks into recreational facilities, bike parking, affordable housing, end-of-trip facilities and other social infrastructure that improves daily life.
This not only prioritizes the people of the city, but also imagines how we might modify buildings and regenerate Melbourne’s CBD post-COVID.
The three honourable mentions also thoughtfully address various pressing conditions of our age, including the future of housing, a shortage of burial space in Australian cities and the need for innovative and collaborative solutions for twenty-firstcentury First Nations infrastructure. We have also awarded four special mentions, including for an airport for birds, an inventive architectural study using Lego, and both an international and local example of repairing urban conditions. These projects prompted jury discussion and interrogation and we hope that something can be learnt from each of them.
Collectively, the awarded projects point to the richness and diversity of architectural thought and the many ways in which architects can engage with serious world challenges.