The Swiss Competition system: A quantitative analy

The Swiss competition system is characterized by three distinct features that set it apart: (1) it is entirely open to foreign practitioners; (2) it mandates anonymity for all candidates throughout the decision-making process conducted by the jury; and (3) all data related to these procedures is public and easily accessible to the general public.


This unique procedural design serves a specific purpose: to allocate contracts and reward architects based on the quality of their work rather than their identity. The procedure is crafted to avoid favoritism or the potential for influential actors to secure contracts through their networks or symbolic capital. The goals of anonymity and equal treatment among candidates are intended to ensure that participants enter the competition on equal footing, with an equal chance of success. But can this claim withstand empirical scrutiny? Can we affirm today that a procedural design that has remained structurally unchanged for over a century still meets the inclusion, quality, and opportunity standards of the contemporary architectural profession?


The SIA 142/143 norms, which govern open and preselection procedures, provide directives on how a competition should be organized and conducted up to the jury’s recommendation for contract attribution. However, these regulations are exclusively operational; they do not include tools to audit, observe, or evaluate the long-term effects of these procedures, their evolution over time, or the resource disparities they may generate among practitioners. Consequently, it is currently impossible to determine through reliable statistical or qualitative observation whether the system operates in alignment with its founding values and principles. The profession has, in effect, organized its own ignorance about the institution of the competition.


In a professional context characterized by the absence of strategic data for modeling success rates or assessing impacts, there is no way to determine whether the market is genuinely open and inclusive or whether it resembles an oligopolistic system. Such an environment fosters representations based solely on personal experience, leading to perceptions skewed by the observer's position: winners see a functional system requiring only minor adjustments, while others list the flaws rendering the process unfair and call for structural reform.


The doctoral research aims to provide the profession with an opportunity to challenge its assumptions through empirical statistical materials. It proposes a hypothetico-deductive analysis to identify the key determinants of procedural outcomes, should they exist.