Competition entries on the other hand are intended to excite the viewer about the potential building. Entrants make their concepts and ideas as understandable as possible. A competition jury is usually composed of design professionals that choose the most appropriate entry. The designers are usually anonymous at the time of judging. This process is reserved for large projects with large budgets, and so often the entrants spare little expense when preparing their presentation boards. Competition judges sometimes allow digitally projected presentation material.
It is important to recognize the differences between these two processes before delving into the overlap between the digital realm and architecture. Normal building commissions account for the vast majority of all building commissions. Competitions are rare and regularly pertain to large public projects. The presentation material for a normal building commission is dense and is intended for use as a contract whereas competitions focus more on aesthetics. It is in the competition domain where we see the majority of the digital work. When the world trade center was going to be rebuilt, a competition was staged to allow designers from all over the world to contribute. It was one of the largest design competitions to date and there were 5,201 entries. There were loads of different media types that all intended to excite the viewer about the potential of his or her project. Each designer was allowed only one standard sized presentation board. The next 4 posts will analyze various boards media choices from the competition website. Design content and presentation layout will be mostly overlooked to focus more on the media.