Architecture Competition Iceland Movie Pavilion Honorable mention winners - Warsaw University of Technology

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to one of our Honorable mention winners for our "Iceland Movie Pavilion" competition – Dziwok Maja and Dectot Alexandra from Poland!

Honorable mention from Poland

We are two architecture students who met during our studies at the Warsaw University of Technology. Maja is a full-time student there, in the final year of her bachelor's studies, while Alexandra is a first-year Master's student from ENSA Paris-Val de Seine doing her Erasmus exchange in Poland.

For both of us, it is the first time we took part in an international competition and we truly enjoyed working on it together. This experience was particularly valuable for both of us, as we come from different backgrounds in terms of architectural studies and design approach. It was a great opportunity to share our skills and look at the design task from a variety of viewpoints.

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?

Both of us are still doing our architecture studies and so far we have enjoyed working on university projects set in our home country or internationally.

Alex: being still a student, I haven’t had the opportunity to work on large-scale projects yet. However, I would say that during the projects that were carried out, the one that impressed me the most was the realization of a student residence because I was able to put myself in the place of the people for whom the building was intended and therefore really understand their needs or expectations.

Maja: Both in my professional and educational experience, I have always been particularly interested in residential projects, especially those regarding the relations between the inhabitants such as co-living spaces. Additionally, I enjoy exploring new techniques and sustainable methods of construction, namely building with CLT.

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

For us, architecture is the art of shaping spaces and designing them to ensure the best conditions for specific users. We believe that the role of the architect is to improve the quality of everyday life through functional and creative design. At the same time, we think that as architects we should stay current with modern challenges and comply with the changing needs of society and sustainability.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

We both believe that an architecture competition is a great opportunity to challenge ourselves and work on designs that develop our creativity. They force us to respond to problems we might have never come across during our education or professional life as architects. Moreover, it is an opportunity to share ideas internationally and compare your work with other design propositions.

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

We think that each architecture competition challenges us to think out of the box in a dynamic working environment. This allows us to share our ideas and explore multiple points of view on a given problem or different approaches to design.