Architecture Competition Iceland Greenhouse Restaurant Honorable mention - John Ng

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to one of our Honorable mention winner for our "Iceland Greenhouse Restaurant" competition – John Ng from United Kingdom!

John Ng from United Kingdom

ELSEWHERE was founded in 2011 by John Ng in London. ELSEWHERE has been shortlisted for, and has won, a number of international competitions. He has lectured on the projects and research of ELSEWHERE at AA, universities in the UK, Syracuse University, and Israel Institute of Technology. ELSEWHERE’s work has been published in AA Files 76.

John Ng has been a First Year Studio Master at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London since 2012. He is also an MA Architecture Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art since 2017. He has previously studied architecture at the University of Bath and received his diploma from the AA in 2011.

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

Elsewhere focuses on architectural competitions as a main production of architectural projects and knowledge.

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

Architecture is … an endless interior where context and enclosure become a single continuum. Architecture is … to forget about junkspace and imagine projects that can only be completed after we are dead. Architecture is … where time is a spatial organisation. Architecture … is a model so big that it becomes its own inhabitable subject. Architecture is … to pressurise air and make a continuous space, experience and breathe it all in with spectacular brevity. Architecture is … an internal sky under which to do nothing (and feel good about it) Architecture is … to wear the roof like a great big fascinator. To understand architecture … one must consume it, in one beautiful gulp. Don’t talk about it. Don’t google it.

Why do you participate in architecture competition?

11 years. 35 competitions. 30 didn’t make it. 1 win. 3 honourable mentions. Now 1 up. Many years of controlled disappointments. Yet fondness is found where “fail” is at its most spectacular. “We could say that competitions are to everyday architecture what competitive sport is to everyday fitness training.” – Farshid Moussavi, writing on competitions in Architectural Review in 2013. A chance to go beyond what architecture is, but what architecture can be. The desk top at night. Clicks, saves; tools and trials. Restart.

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

Stay hungry and curious. Alternate between: 1) Travel 2) Make projects.