The entries for the “2006 Charter Awards”:http://cnu.org/awards2006 have been pouring into the office. It has a bit of a Christmas-y air: deliverymen stumbling in with groaning stacks of colorful FedEx boxes, everything diligently wrapped and awaiting discovery.

A cursory look through shows some very promising entries, some formulaic plans, and some pretty obvious “well, if they can win with that, I can win with this” one-upsmanship. Now that it’s in its sixth year, the second generation of New Urbanist architects is well represented, and potentially a third identifiable generation is emerging — people who may not have thought of their work as New Urbanist in the past but are willing to bet real money that it is now.

Perhaps most interesting: several outstanding (in my opinion, but what do I know?) entries feature modern-ist architecture, even though the jury this year includes super-classicist (e.g., inaugural winner of the “Driehaus Prize”:http://www.driehausprize.org) Leon Krier. I can’t disclose any further details until April, but suffice to say the judging will be very interesting indeed.