Troll’s Tongue Observation Platform competition Honorable mention winner - Kanstantsin Tsviatkou

 We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the Honorable mention winner of our "Troll’s Tongue Observation Platform" – Kanstantsin Tsviatkou from Poland!

Kanstantsin Tsviatkou

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.

I am a young architect combining a job at a bureau operating in London, UK and architectural contests during my education gap. I have already managed to defend a BSc in Architecture and am about to undertake a master course.

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?

In my professional experience I was mostly involved in large complex social housing and built to rent projects based in London on later delivery stages. In my personal experiments with architecture I have done a wide range of conceptual projects for all kinds of uses and scales.

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

I think of architecture as art of shaping the environment, and therefore the cornerstone of our existence. Practicing architecture for me is a way to create experiences, to enrich lives of others and to share my mind with others. And among people I know architects are the respectable people who somehow design and build houses, which is also true and rational opinion.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

In my opinion, competitions are a great way of entertainment and practice because they provide both challenges and interesting problems to solve—problems that you are unlikely to encounter in routine tasks at a bureau. They also offer an opportunity to contribute to the discourse on a particular subject that interests you and to express your connection to a place.

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

It's always worth trying giving competition brief a thought, let your mind wonder a bit around it. And if it finds something, it's a must go. Not to compete, but to have fun developing the concept, to enjoy the creation process, to discover something that you haven't thought of yet, to try something that you have read about, to design.