MICROHOME #10 competition 1st Prize winners - Matthew W Wilde and Aleksa Milojevic

 We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce the 1st Prize winners of MICROHOME #10 competition – Matthew W Wilde and Aleksa Milojevic from the United States!

Matthew W Wilde and Aleksa Milojevic

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

MATTHEW WILDE

I’m an architectural designer based in Brooklyn, working across built projects, speculative research, and exhibition-making. My practice investigates how architecture can cultivate new forms of social and ecological commons. I trained at the University of Dundee and later at the Yale School of Architecture, where I was nominated for the 2021 Feldman Prize. Before graduate school, I worked at O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects, experiences that continue to inform my approach to material reuse, social infrastructure, and urban ecology.

ALEKSA MILOJEVIC

I’m a New York–based architectural designer, researcher, and filmmaker whose work examines contemporary urban conditions, spatial symbolism, and socio-cultural participation. I studied at TU Vienna; the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Kazuyo Sejima; AHO in Oslo; Tongji University in Shanghai; and the Yale School of Architecture, where I worked with Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry. This international background shapes a design approach that moves fluidly between architecture, product-scale prototyping, and visual communication grounded in contextual research.

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?

MATTHEW WILDE

My work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 2023 Venice Biennale with Surfacing The Civilised Agroecological Forests of Amazonia, the Guggenheim Bilbao’s Motion: Autos, Art, Architecture, and the NOMAD exhibition at Autostadt in Wolfsburg. I’m the winner of the international competition The Architect’s Stair and have received several academic awards and nominations for design excellence. Much of my current work is research-driven, exploring how architectural reuse and densification can support urban resilience, social interaction, and shared ecological space within Manhattan’s dense fabric. Central to this research is the concept of the “vertical commons”: outdoor extensions of daily life that occupy façades, stairs, and in-between spaces to reimagine the urban envelope as a site of collective use and shared care.

ALEKSA MILOJEVIC

I’m currently involved in several active projects: a cultural center in California inspired by the legacy of Eastern European epic poetry; a documentary film on rural development in Southern China; and a series of micro-gravity artifacts for astronauts, including a patent-pending mechanism. My work has been presented in both solo and group exhibitions at the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Autostadt Wolfsburg, and the Busan International Architecture Festival.

Together, we are organizing an international exhibition — Reconstructing the Commons — to be presented in New York and Vienna.

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

 In a time defined by privatization and individual ownership, we understand architecture as a shared endeavour — a renewed “Commons.” Our work is rooted in collaboration, social equity, and ecological care, and we seek to blur the boundaries between public and private, design and participation, capital and community. Drawing on contemporary definitions of the Commons as systems and spaces for shared making rather than extraction, we treat architecture not as a finished object but as an ongoing process of negotiation, cohabitation, and mutual support. Through participatory methods, adaptive reuse, and local material economies, we demonstrate that the future of practice lies not in lone authorship but in intentional, collective forms of collaboration.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

We see competitions as opportunities to test ideas beyond the constraints of commercial practice. They give us the freedom to experiment, refine our design identities, and engage with topics or contexts we may not encounter in everyday work.

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

 Competitions are also valuable learning experiences. Focus on themes that genuinely interest you, and use the process to explore, experiment, and build your portfolio. Each project expands your perspective, informs new ideas, and exposes you to different schools of thought.