Architecture Competition Home For The Blind Honorable mention - Architectural Association School of Architecture

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to one of our Honorable mention winners for our  "Home For The Blind" competition – Sari King, Vang Anh Tran, Ching-Han Chiang and Seonwoo Kim from Germany!

Honorable mention winners from Germany

Our group consists of four members who are recent Part 1 graduates from Architectural Association, School of Architecture, London. Two of the members are currently continuing their educational path in the MA program of the AA while the other two are seeking professional experience. Sharing our educational path in Architecture School from first year onwards, we realized our common values and field of interest align where we wanted to explore the potential of the creative process outside of the academic space.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/individuals have been involved?

Since we, individually, were part of different course subjects throughout our undergraduate program, our experience combined ranges from social, environmental, commercial, refurbishment, cultural projects in different scales. Each one of us has a strong focus on understanding and responding to the existing conditions, to create a proposal that is unique and appropriate.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

We believe that architecture is a particular kind of problem solving where invisible conflicts are expressed and resolved physically. For example, with the current brief where we were asked to develop a home for the blind, we realized that our own homes were scripted with many assumptions about the inhabitant which may or may not fit your reality. The brief, then, became not about designing for a particular group of people who cannot see, but about unlearning our previous notions about what is “normal” in our built environment. We became much more interested in investigating what we share as human beings, not when we function, but when we cannot function as usual. We believe the role of the architect is to uncover the dormant needs both from our present and future selves, and to allow the communication between the two.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

We wanted to gain more experience outside of the academic realm, but most importantly we wanted to test how we work as a team and gain more collaborative experience. We felt that architectural competitions force you to continuously make decisions that are tangible, which can get lost in academic projects. Those restrictions enable at the same time a different form of freedom and challenge for the creative process.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

Participating in competitions allows you to explore and diversify your experience as an architect as well as gaining more insight into the community by contributing to a more diverse archive of proposals. Through competitions you are given the opportunity to learn new skills and strengthen the ones you have by applying them to different contexts and challenges.