What the German shows still provide though, are these design competitions, one a year and usually with a number of places reserved for young offices. Design competitions, although expensive (I recall that Schwerin cost us something around Euro 10,000, money we barely regained with our prize award) are incomparably useful for offices, clients and the general public. They are stringently regulated in Germany and are thus as transparent and fair as it is possible to get. I remember that EDAW got awarded the Olympic Park after a closed and very obscure “competition” that had nothing much to do with design, this would not have been possible in Germany for a major project funded from the public purse. There would have been at least 20 design submissions from international offices, all of which would have been publicly displayed after the prize-giving, and it seems indisputable to me that everyone would have benefited from the procedure. There was at one time talk of banning British firms from taking part in German competitions because of England’s failure to allow European architects the same chances that British firms enjoyed in Germany (this talk grew especially loud after Norman Foster’s winning submission for the Reichstag, and indeed it is almost impossible to imagine that a German office would win a similar commission for major works to the Houses of Parliament: what would The Sun have to say about that?), nothing came of this. Neither did the RIBA or the LI do much to react to the criticism.