Architecture Competition Portugal Elderly Home Sustainability Award winners – ROP ARCHITECTS

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the Sustainability Award winners of our "Portugal Elderly Home" competition – Christian Meezen, Adrian Martinez Morcillo and Idris Bahadur from Netherlands!

Team ROP ARCHITECTS

Our architectural firm was founded in 2020 by three partners who formerly worked together for renowned offices in Istanbul and Rotterdam. What unites us is a shared passion for developing high-quality and sophisticated architecture through a proactive and committed collaboration. Our motto ‘research of possibilities’, in short, ROP, defines our working method. It is characterized by an investigative, knowledge-driven design attitude and a motivation to translate complex or extensive design assignments into functional, meaningful and attractive buildings and places. Our company is steadily growing and now consists of a team of six architects with offices in Rotterdam and Istanbul.

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?

Due to our collaborative design approach, our portfolio is international and diverse, and our interests typically tend toward mixed-use and mixed-scale developments. Spaces where public and private meets and the interior merges with the urban and natural sphere. In the recent years this has included a large-scale mixed-use development in Astana, a repatriation center in Istanbul, a large-scale healthcare center in Erbil and a University Interior in Almaty.

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

Architecture has the power to add meaning to human activities and experiences, shaping the way people perceive the world. We believe the role of an architect comes with a great responsibility to combine and incorporate universal, knowledge-driven standards, with local or cultural beliefs, into our build environment, creating impact beyond the scope of the building, but for society as a whole.

Why do you participate in architectural competitions?

Competition projects serve as the perfect laboratory for us to imagine and test new ideas, serving various purposes. For the organizer/initiator of the competition, we strive to present a different, unique, yet always fitting and realistic idea to address the challenges of the design brief. For a broader audience, we aim to create inviting, understandable, and compelling design proposals that facilitate discussions on specific socially relevant subjects. Personally, competitions provide us with a method to push ourselves further, expand our knowledge as a design team, and specialize in a particular area within architecture. In this case, the focus is on elderly housing and the relationship and impact of the built environment on a person's well-being through eco-friendly design.

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 an architectural competition has a multitude of benefits which will vary for each contestant. But for those who doubt, we wish to give the advice that only by attending and completing a competition will one know whether the doubt was justified. Attending is half of the win, so just do it!