Hasta La Ideas

Remember on Friday when we said that everyone would be pleased with the Stirling Prize shortlist? Scratch that. The Guardian‘s Jonathan Glancey has chimed in with his editorial on the award’s latest picks and he finds the whole thing a little dull, the reaction to the world’s financial downfall causing the Stirling to go way too safe and restrained (except for two of the six picks, which Glancey describes as seeming “to represent the very economic culture that has caused so much pain”). What’s more, Glancey doesn’t just feel blah about these awards, but he uses them as a springboard to question the value of all awards, wondering how you can pit such wildly different pieces of architecture against one another. This, we feel, is a bit of a reach for the critic, since any sort of awards (outside of sports) are a completely subjective things with miscellaneous things put up against one another (see: every single movie/television/music awards). That’s not to say we love awards and will defend them to the end, and we should say what huge Glancey fans we are, but it just felt a little odd to read that from him, seeing as architecture competitions are sort of routine in that industry, aren’t they?

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