By Leart Mullaademi

A competition usually ends with one image circulating everywhere. The winning proposal gets a name, a rendering and a short announcement. The rest of the discussion disappears surprisingly quickly.

I think that is a missed opportunity. A competition can produce a public record of how a city considered a problem. Even the proposals that were not selected can show different ways of arranging a site, keeping an existing building or connecting a neighbourhood.

ONUP’s archive gives this subject a useful starting point. Its early publication covered competition proposals, and the later ONUP Talks archive included Besian Mehmeti’s lecture on competitions and design practice. There is a thread here worth continuing: architecture as something that can be discussed while decisions are still visible.

For future competitions in Kosovo, I would like the public record to include the brief, the jury’s reasoning and a legible selection of proposals. The material should explain the site and the constraints. A beautiful image cannot tell us whether a scheme meets the requirements or whether the requirements were sensible in the first place.

The jury’s report matters because it makes judgement accountable. If one proposal was chosen for its treatment of public space, show the plan that supports that conclusion. If cost or phasing changed the result, explain how. Clear reasoning gives other architects something to learn from, even when they disagree.

There is also the question of what follows. Was the project built? Did the brief change? Which parts of the winning scheme survived? Returning to a competition a few years later would produce a more useful article than simply reposting the original rendering.

ONUP could host those returns as short, consistent case studies. Brief. Decision. Outcome. A few drawings, proper credits and a conversation with the people responsible.

A competition should leave behind more than a winner. It should leave behind enough information for the next discussion to be better.

Archive references: ONUP’s early publication archive and Besian Mehmeti’s ONUP Talks lecture feature. The proposed competition practices are opinion, not a description of current regulations.