SEMIFINALISTS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED
Thank you for participating in the BERKELEY PRIZE COMPETITION 2001. Of the many essays submitted, seventy-four met all competition requirements. The Prize Competition Committee has selected twenty-six of the entrants to be invited to proceed to the second stage of the competition. These Semi-Finalists will be notified via the WEB by midnight, Wednesday, March 7 (California time). Final essays will be due by midnight, Monday, April 2 (California time). The final winners will be announced on or about May 9. The winning essays will be posted here. We hope you will take the time to read and, perhaps, respond to the winning entries.

SEMIFINALIST WINNERS

The BERKELEY PRIZE was founded to both acknowledge excellence in architectural writing and thought among undergraduate students and to encourage lively and far-ranging discussion and examination of the social aspects of design. We were very encouraged this year to have received entries from a wide range of schools scattered across the globe (see list below). The idea of social responsibility in architecture seems to remain at the very least a nascent priority in the minds of those beginning their careers in architecture. Profession and Schools of Architecture take note!

We were particularly pleased to see that there were very few simplistic statements: respondents seemed to understand that there were no culprits and no villains in the search for a social architecture. Rather, the entry statements indicated an understanding that like society itself, architecture is a complex organism. Entrants were pondering issues that need to be confronted in places you would not normally think of as directly architectural in nature: criticism, consumerism, politics, even the nature of utopia. It was clear to most that formalism, however elegant, is inadequate to convey and respond to this complexity. Something more must be present to create a social architecture. It is this something more that the best entries sought and attempted to describe.

As models of writing, the entries on a whole needed to be tightened. Many of the writers did not seem to appreciate the very valuable and engaging points they themselves were making. What the Jury – and the general public to whom architectural writing of this sort must ultimately be directed – is looking for is a concisely stated and argued point of view. Tell the audience what you are writing about and stick to it. And although many of the Bibliographies were elaborate and sometimes even intellectually surprising, it was not often clear as to what part of those bibliographies informed the contents of the responses themselves. What specifically in those writings helps motivate your point of view?

We look forward with great interest to the final submittals. Questions regarding this year’s competition may be posted via FAQ on the Competition WEB. For those of you who did not place in this year’s competition, we urge you to submit again when The Berkeley Prize Competition 2002 is announced late next Fall.

THE BERKELEY PRIZE COMMITTEE

Stage 1 Tally

In 2001, the Berkeley Prize Competition expanded to three countries on two continents via the Internet. This year there were 74 eligible entries from undergraduates enrolled
in schools of architecture in Australia (4), Canada (4) and the United States (66). A total of thirty-four institutions were represented, including three from Australia, two from Canada, and twenty-nine from the United States. Australian
entries included those from the Queensland University of Technology (2), the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1), and the University of Western Australia (1). Canada was represented by Dalhousie University (3) and the University of Manitoba (1). In the United States, the sixty-six competitors were from Arizona State University (14), Auburn University (2), Ball State University (3), California Polytechnic State University (1), The Cooper Union (1), Cornell University (1), Drury University (1), Georgia Institute of Technology (4), Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (1), Miami University (2), Montana State University (1), New Jersey Institute of Technology (1), North Dakota State University (2), Ohio State University (1), Rice University (1), SUNY Buffalo (2), University of California, Berkeley (7),University of Detroit, Mercy (2), University of Idaho (3), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1), University of Kansas (1), University of Michigan (1), University of Minnesota (1), University of North Carolina (1), University of Oklahoma (1), University of Oregon (5), University of Washington (2), Virginia Polytechnic Institute (1), and Yale University (2).

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