Interior loggia at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, designed by architect Rafael Vinoly of NYC. In 1998, Lake City native Darla Moore contributed $25 million to the business school at USC. The school became the Darla Moore School of Business in appreciation. In 2004, there was another $45, $30 million of which was matched for a new building in the Innovista.

In any city a $90 million business school building is a plum of a design commission, and in Columbia, it’s the commission of a generation.

Five Columbia architecture firms put themselves in the running, each with an internationally prominent American architecture icon.

The Boudreaux Group brought in Berkebile Nelson Immenschuh McDowell (BNIM) of Kansas City, Mo. BNIM lists nine major education commissions on its Web site, one of the most recent being the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia in Athens. Said Danny Scott, UGA’s associate vice president for facilities, “...never under–thank the BNIM team because we’re so indebted to this collaboration. It unfolded into something that we are so ready to brag about.”

Goizueta School of Business, Emory University, Atlanta — designed by Kallman McKinnell & Wood Architects of Boston. Another BNIM hit is the Fayez S. Sarofim Research Building for the medical school at the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center, the world’s largest.

Garvin Design group brought in Goody Clancy of Boston, the firm that recently did the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University in Washington. More business school buildings by Goody Clancy include work for Purdue University, Dartmouth College, Washington University (St. Louis), Bentley University, Babson College, Texas Tech University, and the University of Rhode Island. The firm has won more than 100 design awards including six national AIA Honor awards.

The Columbia office of Charleston–based LS3P brought William McDonough & Partners from Charlottesville, Va. McDonough’s academic and research buildings include the Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass.; the American University School of International Service in Washington; the University of Calif. at San Francisco Medical Center at Mission Bay in San Francisco; and the Museum of Life and Environment in Fort Mill, S.C.

Watson Tate Savory partnered with the design firm responsible for one of the most controversial and, thereby, most important buildings in post–WWII America, Boston City Hall. Kallman McKinnell and Wood is best known around the Southeast for its Goizueta School of Business at Emory in Atlanta.

The Columbia office of Stevens & Wilkinson of S.C. teamed with Rafael Vinoly of New York. Vinoly himself grew up in Argentina, where he went to school, a similar path taken by Cesar Pelli, architect for the first business school building at Rice University in Houston. Vinoly designed the Tokyo International Forum, which was completed in 1996. His academic work includes the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, the Carl Icahn Laboratory at Princeton University, the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

The business school at the University of Chicago is now named for Mr. Booth, another big–time donor. After all, Booth’s $300 million gift is pretty big time. The building is a little restrained, a polite modern statement probably because it looks across the street to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, his best Prairie Style work.

After all the positioning, all the preparation, and all the meetings, the Moore School of Business in the voice of Darla Moore decided the local connection was not necessary. Moore offered to pay the architect’s fee with the stipulation she would select the architect, and she did.

Rafael Vinoly won the commission, and Stevens & Wilkinson of S.C. was not invited to stay with Vinoly. Neither was any of the other four local firms invited to join in.

With all her generosity since 1998, Moore’s actions cannot be criticized, at least not in university circles, where she is also a trustee at the USC board. Still, the time and expense pulled out of all the competing firms must be noted.

According to The State

newspaper, the five teams probably averaged about $100,000 each in expenses and unpaid time chasing the commission.

Obviously, looking back in hindsight, Vinoly could have been chosen without the false impression of a competition, the projected implication that all five teams had a fairhanded chance of winning the commission, assuming qualifications and track records were up to standards, as they all appeared to be. The quality of the competitors was about as good as anyone can remember in South Carolina.

In building design and construction, overruns are always spotted and avoided or at least reduced, but overruns always occur and some seep through to the bottom line. The projected $90 million budget can grow a little, and the reported $4 million architect’s fee feels a little inadequate as a percentage of the total, especially considering the engineering besides the design and construction documentation and the management of the contract for construction. Point being, this is a $100 million project, and a peace offering to each of the competing firms left behind might make sense.

In the end, though, the Darla Moore School of Business is heading for a world–class home funded in large part by Moore herself. She can do whatever works. It’s her money.