Tips for Winning a Design Award
This week, I attended the judging for Healthcare Design magazine Architectural Showcase issue in Chicago. About 129 projects were submitted and a team of 20 distinguished judges sifted through them to determine if they should be included in the issue and which ones were deserving of citation awards.
I won’t spill the beans and tell you who won (the issue comes out in September), but it was interesting to hear the judges talk about the submittals themselves and what it takes (besides outstanding design) to get a citation. Here are some tips:
1. Read and follow the submittal instructions to the letter. Don’t include your firm name in the submittal if it says not to (this just annoys judges). Make a checklist to insure that you have included everything that you’re supposed to.
2. Answer all the questions thoughtfully and talk about how you did what you did, not why. As one judge said, “Show me the money. Tell me how you are using evidence-based design or green design to achieve outcomes, not just that you used it.”
3. Avoid marketing jargon. Ask project designers, and if possible, the client, to help write the narrative. Judges can tell when narratives are written by marketing people rather than the people who actually worked on the project.
3. Invest in good photography and quality floorplans and/or renderings. Don’t just provide images of the pretty public spaces. Include a comprehensive collection of images that tell the whole story. Incomplete submittals are also frowned upon by the judges.
4. Don’t submit projects that don’t demonstrate any kind of design innovation or thinking. Look at past issues of the Architectural Showcase to see which projects made the cut and which ones received citations. See if you project measures up — even if it’s only in one or two areas.