The Architecture Category of the Good Design Award is clearly distinguished from the many architecture prizes that exist today and indeed, I believe that it must be clearly distinguished from them. Existing architecture prizes limit their idea of design to the design of the physical plant, while this new prize is for design in its broadest sense, including the intangible aspects of architecture (put simply, how the architecture will be used) and how the architecture is created (including how it is torn down or disposed of). Essentially, all the design awards operate on the premise that design should be understood and examined as an expanded concept. In that sense, this award is the most contemporary prize and the one that takes the broadest view of evaluating architecture.

Among this year's submissions, the ones that drew the most attention were architecture for medical and social welfare facilities. What is needed more than anything in this type of building is concern for the users (for example, hospital patients). No matter how superior the design in the narrow sense was, buildings that did not place the needs of the users first were completely eliminated from consideration. Many extremely interesting examples of how to demonstrate concern for users were entered in the competition. For example, the Medical corporation "NIRASAKI HIGASHIGAOKA HOSPITAL" showed how to use a highly spiritual, high-quality space to provide the user with a soothing environment, with a light, airy refined interior be found in a hospital that simply advances a program. In "CARETOWN TAKANOSU", we saw an attempt to create human warmth in the interior of an institution with a traditional passageway. "HAYAMA HEART CENTER" was singled out for special commendation. The layout of its ICU and operating rooms demonstrate thorough understanding of the patient's point of view and allow new proposals that can be clearly distinguished from existing hospital programs. It also defies the stereotype of how a hospital should look like, not only through the way the space is arranged but also through the use of many natural materials, such as wood, in the interior. The breadth and thoroughness of this attempt, which moved beyond the experimental stage and resulted in an extremely comfortable and relaxing space, received high marks, and for this the design received the prize for the Category. Even in the architecture of non-medical and non-welfare facilities we saw many extremely interesting attempts at consideration for the user. For example, the "CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE IN SAITAMA" not only serves as a center for researching environmental technology but was also established with the demonstration of new environmental technology to visitors as one of its goals. The Center is a splendid design response to this goal, since the architecture is required to demonstrate the technology to users in an easily understood and beautiful form. The most unusually interesting response to consideration for the users, including the contractors, was "Cranes V." It is difficult to create a building with a concrete and steel frame on a cramped lot facing a narrow street, but a new construction technique for such lots using lightweight steel beams was proposed here. This approach shortened the construction period and contained costs and also raised the potential of that narrow lot on a back street, allowing us to feel that their might be possibilities for forming an urban district centered on the refurbishment of the Higashimachi-Edomachi Building and surrounding community or for the revival of the central district of a city. Even in large-scale urban projects, some finely tuned projects that took the user's point of view caught our attention. In the Marunouchi Naka Dori, Tokyo's Marunouchi District, which has long been considered a typically staid and cold-hearted urban area, has been making a splendid effort to turn itself into a gentle, warm-hearted neighborhood through new urban planning methods that emphasize human needs and activities rather than outward architectural forms.

Creating attractive communities with jobs, housing, and commerce located near one another will clearly be an essential task for Japan in the 21st century. We were especially impressed by the fact that such an attempt was being made in the Marunouchi District, which is usually thought of as the polar opposite of this kind of ideal community. If you look at just the physical structures such as the "Damonde" the plans appear to be drab and not worth noticing, but the project garnered high marks for building up the intangible assets of the community. Rather than saying that the project was so favorably evaluated despite being non-descript, we should perhaps say that it was evaluated so favorably precisely because it was non-descript. It is both important and necessary to pursue low-key and inconspicuous designs when creating communities. The design for the Kokura Station Building at first seems so commonplace as to be trite, but "the non-descript parts that are never photographed," such as the relationship between the tracks and the architecture and between the monorail and the architecture serve to demonstrate a finely-tuned persistent attempt to take the user's point of view. The public image of previous design awards used to be that gaudy, conspicuous designs won prizes but this year, there is a marked tendency to award prizes to non- descript, inconspicuous buildings.