Alejandro Zaera-Polo to Niall Hobhouse
I just looked at the correspondence in the site, which I had not visited for a while, and I was amazed at the scale and level of the conversation. I think the mechanism you set for the selection is pretty good as you will get interesting feedback in the first phase, and you can always check the credentials of the candidates in the second filter. I think disallowing proposals in the first phase will work, as you ensure that the candidates have some level of intellectual ambition. (some people may feel cheated of doing very well in the first phase and being discarded on the second for lack of track record though…) I suppose that the first phase being conceptual is likely to exclude pure gardeners from the contest… But that may be fine provided that in the second phase, the conceptual entrants can demonstrate some level of gardening ability. I really do not know what is out there in this field, so I can not predict what you will get… I have not read in detail yet the correspondence and something may have escaped my diagonal reading but I do not see reasons to modify the design. I am still very happy with the proposal and I think it is a very interesting project (as a whole, also your brief, the website, the way it is developing etc…) Has the correspondence made you question some parts of the design? If so, please let me know and we can consider it. I would really like to see the paths drawn on the site when you do them, so let me know and we can organise a weekend visit to the garden.