The organizers of the competition named the youth of the potential winner or the unusualness of his creative language and the presence of experience in the development of projects of museum structures, if we are talking about a recognized master, as the main selection criteria.
Among the most eminent participants in the second stage are Pritzker Prize winners Hans Hollein and Zaha Hadid. Both have the necessary experience, moreover, the former has more than the latter (especially if we count the completed projects), and the work of both is distinguished by a bright individual style (although in this aspect it is difficult for anyone to compare with Hadid). At the same time, in Hollein's works one can find more attention to the details and peculiarities of a particular order, as, for example, in his Museum of Glass and Ceramics in Tehran. Zaha Hadid is more committed to solving formal problems, which is better combined with works of contemporary art than with the more traditional collections of the Perm Art Gallery.
Odile Decck is a prominent teacher and theorist of modern architecture. Her idea of Hyper-Tension - "hyper-tension" - is embodied in buildings of unusual appearance, which amaze the imagination even now, when, as it would seem, projects that produce such an impression often appear. The negative aspect of her work is that they are difficult to implement, besides, she has no experience in building (but not designing) museums yet.
The Austrian workshop "Coop Himmelb (l) ay" can also be attributed to the honored participants in the final of the competition. Wolf D. Prix has many years of experience not only in designing public buildings in general, but museums in particular. Recent examples include the Ekron Museum of Art, which opened in the United States a week ago. Philip Johnson included the works of the workshop in 1988 in the iconic exhibition "Deconstructivist Architecture" at the MOMA Museum in New York, but "Coop Himmelb (l) ay" has not lost ground since then, continuing to design unusual and full of energy buildings.
The younger generation includes David Adjaye and Asymptote. Asymptote architects have been among the promising for almost 20 years and are gradually moving into the category of masters. Their works, reflecting the vast possibilities of digital architecture, have long attracted the attention of the public and critics, but real opportunities for translating their larger projects into reality have appeared for architects only in recent years.
Ajaye can be considered a favorite of the competition: he is considered the most talented of young architects in Great Britain, his Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver is due to open this fall, and if his projects are usually more restrained than those of his final rivals, then the lack of theatrical effects We can easily make up for David Adjaye's attention to environmental problems and to the interaction of a public building with the individual, ordinary person for whom it is being erected.
