Guide · 19 February 2026 · 8 min read
What the panel actually scores, line by line
We publish the criteria, but almost nobody reads them. Here is what happens to an instruction in the forty minutes it is on the table.
Every instruction is scored on three axes before we accept it: authorship, condition and provenance. Each is marked out of ten by four people independently, and the marks are averaged rather than argued to consensus. An instruction needs twenty-one to pass.
Authorship is the hardest to fake and the easiest to score. Either the drawings can be attributed to a named architect or they cannot. A house by a practice rather than a person scores lower, not because the work is worse but because the market has nothing to hold on to.
Condition is scored against the original drawings, not against fashion. A kitchen from 1974 in its first paint scores higher than one replaced in 2019. This surprises owners more than anything else we tell them.
Written by Ines Halvorsen · Coastal
