Crowdsourcing the Obama presidental center

In this artcle, we present crowdsourcing as a design delivery method for publicly funded buildings, and compare it to the traditional Request for Proposals (RFP). We explore the potential of crowdsourcing through the use of an online design compettion for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, IL, which the authors administered at Arcbazar.com, a crowdsourcing platorm. Compettion procedures have been applied in architectural practce since antquity, from the Parthenon and the Hagia Sophia to thousands of seminal buildings around the globe. However, with the advent of digital technologies and outreach to a more interconnected world, crowdsourcing allows even the most mundane design challenges to go through the fair compettion protocol. We argue that crowdsourcing can help democratze architectural design acquisition by giving a level playing field to designers, and produce a more just, compettive, and creative design product.