Surroundings / Not a pretty sight

The inflation in architectural prizes is increasing. Within a few weeks in May, Tel Aviv saw ceremonies to honor the winners of the Culture Ministry's Zeev and Yaakov Rechter Prizes and the Azrieli Prize for urban planning, awarded jointly with the Council for a Beautiful Israel.

Meanwhile, in Buenos Aires, the Pritzker Prize - the Nobel of architecture - was awarded. And that's just a partial list. You might think all was well in the world of urban planning and architecture, and we can rest on our laurels and pat each other on the back while nibbling hors d'oeuvres at the cocktail parties held where prizes are handed out.

The prizes differ in several aspects, such as how much they are worth. The Rechter Prize winners receive NIS 35,000 each; NIS 100,000 goes to the Azrieli winner and $100,000 to the Pritzker winner.

All three prizes exist inside the same bubble, disconnected from social and environmental commitment, from political involvement, from taking a critical stand and from the global crises that concern the architectural world and so strongly influence it. The bubble is no accident but built-in to the prizes, their history, their patrons and perhaps their very existence.

Whether such prizes come from the government or financial institutions, from private business or public bodies, they always go to architects who toe the line and mind the status quo - the one created by the prize-givers, which they want to be valued.

Most architects go along with the scheme, planning and shaping their work to win these prizes. Without casting doubt on the professional achievements of this year's winners or those of previous years, one can say the granting of prizes and the willingness to accept them continues this collaboration.

So many architecture prizes are awarded in Israel, it's really an industry. But the building environment maintained is ugly from an architectural point of view; construction quality is on the decline; and public spaces display bad taste and poor maintenance.

No prize has helped at all to change the situation, to offer a different agenda or to prevent architects from mobilizing to apply [Israel's] policies in the West Bank settlements of closed communities and inequality in planning. Even the monetary awards of the prizes are unjust. The winners are usually established architects who no longer need them.

The interesting thing is often not who won, but who didn't. For example, this year the Rechter Prizes went to the Mayslits Kassif office for its design of the new Tel Aviv port and to architect Vered Fluk for her video installation "Curbstone."

The losers (who weren't candidates) who deserved to win are a group of architects battling to save the Zichron Yaakov relaxation and rest home, designed in the 1960s by Yaakov Rechter, son of Zeev, for whom the prize is named. The fact that the relaxtion and rest home won Yaakov Rechter an Israel Prize for architecture is not being taken into account, nor will it save the building from demolition - more food for thought on architecture prizes.

It may be an accident that the Rechter Prize was not awarded to those leading the fight against the rest home's demolition.

However, a scion of the Rechter family, architect Amnon Rechter, is himself responsible for the demolition plan that nixed the chances - on the most suitable platform - of those trying to save the rest home. Many architects were present at the awards ceremony a few weeks ago, including those who support preserving the rest home and who petitioned against its demolition. Not one of them saw fit to protest and break up the ceremony, perhaps out of politeness or perhaps for fear of losing the chance to win the family's prize in the future.

The Azrieli Prize for Urban Planning went to the Holon municipality this year for its "Story Garden" project, in which sculptures of characters from popular children's books go into the city's public spaces. The "losers" are the non-profit organizations that expose injustice in urban planning and promote human rights in planning by assisting communities that are poor or lack professional or political know-how.

The prize money would have been 10 times more effective in their hands than with the city of Holon, which can look after itself. Interesting. Azrieli, the king of shopping malls, which destroy all hope of urbanization, provides the prize money for urban planning.

The Pritzker Prize went this year to Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, whose image and work are crystal-clear incarnations of disengagement from worldly experience and the challenges facing architecture. He is an architect's architect, an uncompromising perfectionist who works with chosen clients willing to fund his compulsions. His works are considered hand-crafted architectural jewels. He lives in his own world in a remote Alpine village and cultivates the image of a reclusive monk. He made his reputation by planning a spa in the town of Vals, a design considered perfect, although it is hard to see how it contributes to the world outside its doors.

Someone who did not win the Pritzker though he certainly deserved it, especially in these times, is the British architect Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity, the world's leading organization in planning for populations in crisis in disaster areas.

Sinclair and Kate Stohr founded the organization in 1999, following the war in Kosovo. It operates with 70 chapters in 30 countries and numbers 40,000 members, professionals in the field who volunteer their skills for free. It has completed 245 projects - clinics, schools and temporary and fixed housing characterized by technological creativity and architecture that suits environmental conditions.

Sinclair's activities and image are the opposite of Zumthor's and of all Pritzker winners. Since the prize was established in the 1970s, its list of winners reveals a typical swathe of the established, most of them past their professional peak (Sinclair is 36 and at the beginning of his career), successful and well-known, white and Western.

They design expensive buildings for rich customers, well-padded with laurel wreaths and cash even without prizes. Sinclair has protested more than once about the reigning agenda and has called on his colleagues to leave the architectural bubble.

When the Pritzker was announced, many in the international architectural community were heard saying that Sinclair should have won it.

On second thought, Sinclair and Architecture for Humanity don't need a seal of approval from Pritzker, though the cash would have been more helpful to their work than to Zumthor's.

The Pritzker Prize and most of the other architecture prizes need to find worthy recipients to become relevant and stand for more than just an industry of refreshments and bear hugs. That is, if there is any justification for the existence of prizes. It might be better to change the system entirely.