by Corydon Ireland

At a recent Gund Hall event, Harvard urban planner Jerold S. Kayden called design competitions “chicken soup” — just the right cure, in the minds of those who praise them, for addressing today’s increasingly complicated challenges of the built environment. Such contests, typically open to anyone with an architecture degree, often unleash creative energies and become “instigations of significant thought,” said Kayden, the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). They also provide a forum for young practitioners whose voices might otherwise go unheard in the noise of the marketplace.