Eric Owen Moss outlines the background of the competition, in which a grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs created the opportunity to create a four-year pavilion that would be used not only for SCI-Arc's commencement but for community events. Each of the competition participants (Marcelo Spina, Elena Manferdini, Ramiro Diaz-Granados, Tom Wiscombe) briefly describe his or her project. Moss challenges each of the participants to clarify their explanations, prompting a discussion of siting, communicating to different audiences, and open versus closed systems. Marcelo Spina suggests that the competition format leads designers to modify their work according to intuitions about jury preferences and prejudices. This prompts a discussion of different strategies for dealing with competitions. Moss concludes with a summary of the jury's response to the four projects.