THE GREAT BRITISH BUILD OFF?

摘要

I've often thought that if there were any logic in these matters, the RIBA Stirling Prize ceremony would not only be restored to prime time TV, but its ratings would comfortably eclipse The Great British Bake Off. The tabloids would spend the run-up campaigning for their favoured architect ('AD JAYE WE GO!' 'ZAH A SNUBBED' etc). Fashionistas would speculate about what David Chipperfield and Norman Foster would be wearing. As the presenters - James Corden? Sue Perkins? -unveiled the results, we'd all shout at the screen. I should say I'm not some architecture pseud. My feeling are more to do with the inescapability of the form. The Oscars have the glamour, but it's not as if the Best Picture will be playing on a loop outside your house for the next century. The Turner Prize and Booker Prize still excite controversy, but no one is frogmarched into art galleries or forced to read novels at gunpoint (at least not until the next round of education reforms). I suppose the Brit Awards serve a wider social purpose, in that you'll probably hear the winners on a shop PA system while you're out buying pants one day. But architecture has a far more intimate relationship with our day-to-day lives. We all want to live somewhere that looks and functions better, surely.