Should temporary buildings be allowed to win RIBA awards?

摘要

RIBA awards should champion the experimental and the poetic, not the worthy and permanent. There is beauty in transience and tedium in the enduring. Every spring, thousands in Japan head to the park for the annual hanami party. Spreading out blankets beneath the branches of blossom-laden cherry trees, they get drunk on sake and indulge in an outdoor version of the British end-of-year office party. The party is about impermanence. No sooner has the blossom arrived, it has withered. This ephemerality gives the festivities their essential poignancy.