Is the furiously fast new Ferrari Challenge Stradale a better car than a stout Land Rover Discovery - and is this farmer's friend superior to a nimble Smart car?
Even if you cared, there is no definitive answer. If you had to tootle around a city centre all day, you might well stick up for the Smart. If you had to plug across sodden fields with a wet sheep and a sack of potatoes, the virtues of the Land Rover would be apparent. And if you had the chance to whiz down to the Côte d'Azur, or to play this Saturday for Manchester United, I guess you would vote for the Ferrari.
The Stirling prize is a bit like this. How can anyone compare the virtues of Foster and Partners' triumphantly engineered, multi-million pound Great Court at the British Museum - as they have asked themselves to do - with Sutherland Hussey and his artist pals' poetic £95,000 ferry shelter on the wind-blasted coast of wild Tiree? And is Eric Parry's crisp office block at 30 Finsbury Square in the City of London in any way to be judged beside Bill Dunster's eco-friendly Bedzed housing for the Peabody Trust in suburban Surrey?
Perhaps it doesn't matter. This year's winner is probably the Laban dance centre in Deptford, south-east London.
Designed by Herzog and de Meuron, the Swiss architect heroes of the munificently populist Tate Modern, here is a building that is all things to all men, women, dancers and architectural judges. Handsome, alluring, practical, uplifting, inventive, an architectural gem in a run-down part of town, the Laban is the bookies' favourite, and anyone can see why.
It seems unlikely that the prize, a PR stunt for the Royal Institute of British Architects, will go to an office block, no matter how elegantly designed. Most people cannot wait to get out of these back-biting machines, whereas they choose to go to attractions like the British Museum and the Laban.
Offices need to be better designed - no doubt about that - but they are the Ford Mondeos of the architectural world, and no matter how worthy, would we give the Mondeo a prize when we could choose a BMW M-series (Foster), a Land Rover (Bill Dunster) or a Smart (Sutherland Hussey) instead?
Still, if it is the Laban's turn to win this year - it is a fine building which presses all the right buttons - there ought to be a special prize for the beautiful ferry shelter on Tiree. Here is proof that architects, and artists too, can conjure magic from the smallest, most out-of-the-way public project, creating visual poetry from the most prosaic programme.
- Bouw & Wonen Partners:
