Foreword

From time to time a project comes around offering prospect to reconsider conventional conceptions of contemporary architectural practice in relation cultural and global issues. The Kraków Oxygen Home is one of those projects. The brief invites entrants to respond to an obscure, yet profound social crisis in the Kraków region of Poland. Due to reliance on coal-burning furnaces for heating, residents of Krakow are threatened by pervasive air pollution causing increasing incidents of asthma, chronic lung disease, and lung cancer. The brief calls for the design of a care center for lung cancer patients as part of the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Memorial Institute of Oncology.


Identifying a local challenge, the Krakow Oxygen Home competition parallels global concerns of human induced pollution, similarly provoked by historically significant, though contemporarily archaic technological practices indifferent to place, time, and scale. While specific to the physiological consequences of a detrimental habit, the competition suggests that global environmental issues are exemplified and made evident in the everyday life of local communities. As an ideas competition, the project is therefore distinguished by architecture’s highest aspirations of social engagement in pursuit of both altruism and provocation.


Submissions to the competition varied considerably, as demonstrated by the vast imagination of selected work. Winning entries resonated with the ambition of the brief. These projects are recognized for clarity in organization, sensitivity to public and private relation, material sensibility per the program, use, and site, integration with the park, and consideration for the neighboring institute of oncology. Selected submissions are differentiated by the singularity of an architectural vision — material, space, and form — of a healthful, sustainable environment.

Competition results in media publications


COMPETITION ORGANISERS
Krakow 
Oxygen Home

1st Prize Winner

Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Participation in architecture vision competitions for me is a good way to finding new answers for exciting problems in my context and a suitable direction to creating and detecting my own architec- ture language.

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Authors Nima Nian, , Behdad Heydari, ,
Country Iran

2nd Prize Winner

Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Authors Paul Jones, Chris Brown, , ,
Country United Kingdom

3rd Prize Winner

Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Since graduating I have yet to find a job, and I didn't want my skills to get rusty so I decided to enter competitions as a source of income and portfolio filler. Also, the freedom to pursue my own ideas. This project was a first for me in that I had literally zero outside input. No professors, friends or colleagues bounce ideas off of was interesting to say the least.

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Authors Cameron Kollath, , , ,
Country United States

Honorable Mentions

Show Honorables Mentions (6 of 6) Hide Honorables Mentions projects
Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Authors Andrea Di Pompeo, Ettore Celli, Mario D'Amario, Giacomo Cornacchia,
Country Italy
Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Authors Stephanie Zavalli, Julia Mitsidi, Christos Xenofontos, Andreas Prokopiou,
Country Cyprus
Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Authors Lauren Crockett, Lucas MacMillan, Matthew Sikora, Connor Mackenzie,
Country Australia
Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Authors Nistros Dragos Mircea, Vingan Razvan, Ignat Ana-Maria, ,
Country Romania
Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Authors Agata Jaszczyk, Jędrzej Pawlaczyk, Mirosław Wojcieszak, ,
Country Poland
Project name

Krakow Oxygen Home

Authors Shogo Otaka, Hiroaki Sato, Hitoshi Nagano, ,
Country Japan