SHFA Helps an Architectural Competition Entrant to Win?

No doubt the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority will find sensible sounding reasons to explain why, behind closed doors, it chose competitor B over competitor A in its architectural competition for the commercial and residential development it planned for the former Water Police site at Pyrmont Point.

Despite the fact that a community vote preferred (or to be more accurate, detested least) Competitor A’s design, SHFA announced competitor B the winner. This involves more than glory as the winner, architectural firm Engelen Moore went on to work on the development application and would be in a good position to win the subsequent design work for the development.

The plot gets thicker. Documents obtained under FOI include a letter from jury panel member Geoffrey Twibill, a community member, who is also an architect.

Mr Twibill also seems curious about SHFA’s selection of competitor B and makes strong suggestions that competitor B was the beneficiary of discussions with SHFA that were not available also to competitor B. In a letter to SHFA on 14 June 2003 Mr Twibill writes:

“I’d be most interested to know the outcome of your “negotiations” with the Architect for Scheme B – and I cannot help but think that a similar process should be (or should have been) followed with the Architects for Scheme A”

It seems that even a member of the jury panel didn’t know, or have a say, in what was going on.

Mr Twibill also says:

“It is disappointing, as we agreed around the table, that neither scheme is the robust “standout” world class scheme that might reasonably have been expected from such a well-conducted competition process. Each has attractive aspects which, in an ideal world might easily have been rolled into one – but sadly were not.”

Mr Twibill’s air of dissatisfaction with the whole process and his final call (which was refused) for both A and B to be allowed to respond to an expanded brief suggest that SHFA’s competition was never a “well-conducted process.” See also how SHFA ignored suggestions that a probity officer be appointed to oversight the competition process and ignored on offer by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects to independently manage the competition process.

Seems that on matters that should be open and transparent, SHFA prefers them to be closed and secret.