The problem with architecture awards

The problem with architecture awards is that they end up dictating the design of what gets built
I cant help thinking the reason so many buildings pay such little regard for what is around them is because the architect thinks allowing a buildings surroundings to affect a buildings design, is to pollute its purity and render it less likely win an award.

Trust me, the potential to win awards comes very low down on the list of design criteria for the vast majority of new buildings. Most of the time it isn't in the criteria at all. The most important criteria is money; how much is it going to cost and/or how much money will be made out of it. Anyone who believes that on the whole architects are prima donnas is very mistaken. Most of them can't afford to be and their clients are certainly not going to indulge them by funding it either. Architectural practice is a business first and foremost and it's not a particularly well paid or profitable one.

Where buildings really don't fit in with their surroundings because, for example, they are too big it is often because economics made them that way. This is not always the case though. In SE1 right now the thing making new residential buildings big is nothing to do with economics and everything to do with planning requirements for much higher densities than we have ever known in this country.

I didn't mention size, I was thinking of materials, a small building can be none communicative with its surroundings,