The ARCH-E Collection of Good Practice Examples

To fully exploit an ADC’s potential for all stakeholders involved, the ARCH-E consortium recommends a set of standards – such as anonymity, accessibility for all qualified architects - regardless of their office’s economical capacity or references - and other principles - to guarantee a fair and successful competition for the best project. The complete list of recommendations by the ARCH-E consortium is to be found in the ARCH-E White Paper. As each project context is unique, there is not one ADC procedure that fits all building programmes and situations. Therefore, the ARCH-E consortium presents exemplary ADC procedures that meet high standards, are remarkable in at least one aspect and lead to exceptional results. Nevertheless, because no project can be perfect, it was agreed to talk about “good” and not “best” practice examples. But rest assured that the listed projects are examples worth emulating at any time.

The approach of presenting a collection of diverse good practice examples in ADC procedures highlights how adaptable ADC procedures can be to find the best project for its specific context.

Each ARCH-E consortium member selected one procedure to be included in the Map on ADCs, an ARCH-E publication realised following the lead of TU/e, namely by Grazia Tona, Torsten Schröder and Juliette Bekkering. The present collection adds two projects selected by UIA, three by ACE and one by ARCH-E’s cooperation project UREHERIT.

The described projects are exemplary for Europe’s professional, diverse competition scene. With this publication and many other activities, the ARCH-E consortium wants to contribute to enhancing the number of ADCs in Europe and hopes to inspire municipalities and other procurers to use ADCs as the ideal tool for quality-based procurement more often and thus enjoy the benefit of more excellent and cost-efficient projects.