[Editor’s Note: The following is a reader-submitted response to a backpage comment by Marshall Brown, “Kick the Architectural Competition Habit” (AN02_02.19.2014_Midwest). Opinions expressed in letters to the editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions or sentiments of the newspaper. AN welcomes reader letters, which could appear in our regional print editions. To share your opinion, please email editor@archpaper.com. ]

Bravo. This “addiction” at the top of the field inspires exploitation of architects all the way down the line. While I was in graduate school, a professor “employed” a classmate to pull all-nighters on a competition entry, which had no relation to his coursework.

He was told that if they won the competition, then he would be offered a job at the firm. Just how did this arrangement correlate with his supposedly progressive politics? As a firm principal, I have also encountered job applicants and employees, long out of school, whose skill set was incredibly narrow due to their fixation on competition entries, which only required graphic dexterity.

They couldn’t make anything.

Christopher Rawlins
Rawlins Design Incorporated